- There is one obvious way to provide type hints for your code, it’s to use the typing module provided by the language which also provides syntax support for it.
- You don’t have to use it because not all code has to be typed
- You can use formatted strings, but you don’t have to
- You can use comprehensions but you don’t have to
- You can use async io, but you don’t have to. But it’s the one obvious way to do it in python
The obvious way to annotate a generic function isn’t with a giant Union, it’s with duck typing using a Protocol + TypeVar. Once you known that, the obvious way is… pretty obvious.
The obvious way not be bothered with type hints because you don’t like them is not to use them!
Python is full of optional stuff, dataclasses, named tuples, meta programming, multiple ancestor inheritance. You dont have to use these features, but there are only one way to use them
Optional nature of those features conflicts with this statement. As optionality means two ways already.
But times change and these days, Python is a much larger language with a bigger community, and there is a lot more cross-pollination between languages as basic philosophical differences between the most popular languages steadily erode until they all do pretty much the same things, just with different syntax.
It never was a thing in Python, it is a misquote of the Zen of Python that apparently became popular as a reaction against the TMTOWTDI motto of the Perl community.
The misquote shifts the emphasis to uniqueness rather than having an obvious way to accomplish goals, and is probably a result of people disliking the “There is more than one way to do it” adage of Perl (and embraced by the Ruby community) looking to the Zen to find a banner for their opposing camp.
That in itself violates the spirit of the language, IMO. “There should be one obvious way to do it”.