alt Hacker NewsI had exactly this reaction when gradual typing came to Python. "Do we really need this??"
But over time, I've grown to love it. Programming is communication—not just with the machine, but with other developers and/or future me. Communicating what types are expected, what types are delivered, and doing so in a natural, inline, graceful way? Feels a big win.
But you use types not to communicate with other people - you use them to give more hints to the python interpreter. Otherwise you could use comments. :)