Why You Should Care About Types

Speaker: Luka Sterbic

Track: Other

Type: Keynote

Room: Ballroom

Time: Oct 10 (Thu), 09:30

Duration: 1:00

By now you have probably all heard about Python static typing. But why should you care? Are types in Python even Pythonic? SPOILER: Guido says so. Is Python turning into Java? In this talk I’ll try to answer these questions and explain how type annotations helped my team scale, made our code more efficient and new hires happier.

We will start with how the typing system in Python came to be, what is the motivation for it and how it looks today. I will demonstrate how to gradually add types to a pre-existing codebase and what benefits will your team get in the long run from a 100% typed project. I will also cover Facebook specific technologies that have now been open sourced like our runtime type collection system, MonkeyType, and the scalable type checker, Pyre!