Comment by dmurray

> Ignoring the question of why there's some random assignment to x in the first place, where are its type hints? Those were added starting with Python 3.5 via PEP 484 just over 10 years ago and have been added to since then.

The code is in a third party library which doesn't have comprehensive type hints, and perhaps has type expectations so complicated that they can't be expressed in the Python type system.

Even if you enforce type hints on every line in your internal code, you're going to be relying at some point on libraries which are reliable but poorly type hinted. If you're not using that vast ecosystem of libraries, Python probably wasn't the best choice.