I'm learning Python after 35 years of working with statically typed languages (Pascal, C++, Java, a bit of Typescript lately) and by god this is hard. Not because there is anything in the language that I don't understand but the lack of any type info is killing me. I just can't build up a rhythm of coding. I feel like every five lines I have to sprinkle in print() statements to keep track of the data transformations as there is nothing useful that can be captured about it even with these weak ass "type hints". I know that even when I get this crap to work I'll hate going back to that code in a few months as I'll have forgotten what the hell it all did and will have to spike it with print() ad df.shape() again to make sense of it. And naming discipline can only get you so far.
Maybe dynamic typing just isn't my thing and I need a new gig...
I've moved from Python to a static language and it's made programming enjoyable again. I'd forgotten that that was possible. It's much more productive as well. Using Python as a production application language is like playing operation. For me what I really detest is ambient, untyped (in the sense that they aren't declared in the function definition) exceptions. Exceptions can just happen on any line, and there's no way to know what exceptions a function will raise. So you have to dig into the source code of your dependencies and such, it's a tremendous waste of time and you still get unanticipated exceptions in production.
MyPy is awesome and will make you a more productive programmer and will make your application more robust. But I agree that Python types are "weak ass". It's not a particularly ergonomic type system to use, and it's more difficult to express complex types than is worth it for the sometimes questionable benefit.
3.10 does add unions using | which is nice, and I expect the type system will get better, but I share these frustrations.
Maybe dynamic typing just isn't my thing and I need a new gig...