I’m surprised the article doesn’t make more of TypeScript.
From a technical perspective, I find both python and node.js to be pretty underwhelming. If I had to pick a shiny new thing it would probably be one of the usual suspects like Rust.
But last time I worked with Python (2022), types in python were pretty uninspiring. In 2022 typescript was already very powerful and it just keeps improving.
Types in python are really good now.
It's the asyncio and all performance footguns which need to be fixed.
Whats "really good"? Pydantic? Mypy with dataclasses and built in typings? Is integration with Django okay? Genenily curious, not sarcastic. Im coming from from static typing and learning python ecosystem. Im still searching to make it work for me
Pros:
Pydantic is good. Mypy and pyright are good enough for type checking real projects. I run mypy as pre commit. It takes time but it has saved me from real bugs.
The type system coupled with pydantic for validation is more expressive and ergonomic than java / go. But it's also lousy when working with people who don't have the type oriented thinking (especially juniors). You need to enforce people to type public signatures and enable strict linter settings.
Mixed:
Library wise, FastAPI ecosystem is type-first and works well. But old world ecosystems like django - I don't have first hand experience.
SQL alchemy seems to be getting better. But I wish something type-first similar to sqlc or room or Micronaut Data JDBC existed for python, where I could just use pydantic validated DTOs and use query builder, rather than dealing with SQLAlchemy's proxy objects. It's workable though. I would suggest keeping SQLA objects in only the layer that touches the DB and convert them to pydantic models at the boundary.
Library support is hit or miss. In common web dev, I get good typings as long as I stick to popular and "boring" libraries. Sometimes I have to look at docstring and use typing.cast to return types.
Cons:
new type checking solutions like pyrefly aren't there yet for my use cases. Ruff is good as linter and VSCode extension.
IDE extensions and mypy still miss some bugs which should never happen in typed languages. ESP with coroutines. (I wish there was a way to make it an error, to call coroutines without await, unless submitting them to a asyncio.run or gather etc.., dart has very good async linting in comparison).
Writing a: dict[tuple[str, str, str], int] = {} is no fun. But it guarantees if I use a wrong type of key down in the function, I will get a red squiggle.