Python has formalized magic comments.

You can run a third party linter on those comments, but you must hope that they're correct. There are usually some checks for that, but they're only reliable in trivial cases.

This is not static typing any more than "you can use emscripten to transpile JavaScript to C" means that JavaScript is a low level language with native assembly support. It's a huge step forward from "no system at all" and I'm thrilled it exists, but it's hardly the same thing.

It's actually remarkable how with the success of TypeScript so many other dynamic languages switched to gradual typing.

Erlang and Clojure were the early ones, TypeScript followed, and now Python, Ruby, and even Perl have ways to specify types and type check your programs.

> Good that Python supports types then

"Optional typing" is not the same as "Static typing".

Great, my program will crash, because I forgot to opt-in to typing :-/

Poorly, though, and with lots of edge cases and foot guns to make you miserable once your code calls out to numpy or gets some JSON.

Tell me more please: how does one use types in Python? Unfortunately I write Python professionally these days (it is the language that has all the libraries) and hate it with a passion.