Type Checking In Python: Catching Bugs Before They Bite — Python
Type checking in Python enhances code clarity and reliability. We catch errors early and maintain high software quality by using type hints and one or more type checkers. This article covers the benefits of type hints, and how to install and run mypy, pyright, and pyre.
- 6 min read
© 2023 The Turing Taco Tales / Oscar Mauricio Forero Carrillo
Originally published at The Turing Taco Tales on August 24, 2024.
Overview
In Python, dynamic typing allows for great flexibility but can lead to subtle and hard-to-find bugs. This is because Python’s type checks are limited and happen at runtime.
What is Type Checking?
Type checking is verifying the types of variables and expressions in your code. This happens at compile time in statically typed; in dynamically r programs, they are not type-checked before running.
The runtime might make some type assertions, but our code needs to deal with inputs having unexpected types; otherwise, our code might fail in surprising ways.
Although we shouldn’t expect Python to achieve the rigor of Static type-checking of languages like Scala or Haskell, the languages have slowly gained…
