cid 8aeed50fbbec89c6c1edba60ccfdfbdd0a1443f4c9f1ce8875555a2d344fa470 · original · open access · via openalex
Title: Toward a Corpus Study of the Dynamic Gradual Type Authors: Dibri Nsofor; Ben Greenman Venue: arXiv (Cornell University) Year: 2025 Canonical: doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.08928 URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2503.08928 Collector: openalex OA: true ABSTRACT Gradually-typed languages feature a dynamic type that supports implicit coercions, greatly weakening the type system but making types easier to adopt. Understanding how developers use this dynamic type is a critical question for the design of useful and usable type systems. This paper reports on an in-progress corpus study of the dynamic type in Python, targeting 221 GitHub projects that use the mypy type checker. The study reveals eight patterns-of-use for the dynamic type, which have implications for future refinements of the mypy type system and for tool support to encourage precise type annotations.