
#539: Catching up with the Python Typing Council
From Talk Python To Me by Michael Kennedy
March 6, 2026 · 1h 2m · Episode 539
About this episode
The episode discusses the governance of Python's type system with members of the Python Typing Council.
You're adding type hints to your Python code, your editor is happy, autocomplete is working great. But then you switch tools and suddenly there are red squiggles everywhere. Who decides what a float annotation actually means? Or whether passing None where an int is expected should be an error? It turns out there's a five-person council dedicated to exactly these questions -- and two brand-new Rust-based type checkers are raising the bar. On this episode, I sit down with three members of the Python Typing Council -- Jelle Zijlstra, Rebecca Chen, and Carl Meyer -- to learn how the type system is governed, where the spec and the type checkers agree and disagree, and get the council's official advice on how much typing is just enough.
People in this episode
Host: Michael Kennedy
Guests: Jelle Zijlstra, Rebecca Chen, Carl Meyer
Topics covered
- Python
- type hints
- type checkers
- Python Typing Council
- governance
- programming
Keywords
- type hints
- Python Typing Council
- type checkers
- programming
- float annotation
- None type
- governance
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Python Typing Council
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