Comment by screye

13 hours ago

Think of it this way. There are 2 groups. Group 1 has has avoided typecheckers because they're a PITA and group 2 has configured mypy/pyright despite the devx pain. Group 1 is a lot bigger than group 2. Group 2 is more lucrative per unit than group 1.

With enough time, ty and pyrefly will approach perfectness. If they're easy enough to use today, group 1 should be able to adopt them without any extra pain. (some typechecker is better than no typechecker). This gives them momentum. In couple of years, ty/pyrefly may finally be better than mypy/pyright. Then, Group 2 can start their ports.

This way, no one misses out. Group 2 still gets their perfect typechecker, just not immediately. But in that time, Group 1 is getting familiar with using typecheckers and their sheer size helps build institutional momentum towards typecheckers as an essential piece of any python dev flow.

If A. 'certain class of python problems are permanently solved by typecheckers' and B. 'every python user has some typechecker' become true, then that opens a lot of doors. Today, B is a harder problem than A. I'm guessing that compiled/JIT python will be the next frontier once python typing is solved. Wide typechecker adoption is a blocking requirement for that door to be opened.