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Original: Simon Willison · 18/02/2026

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Summary

25+ years into my career as a programmer I think I may finally be coming around to preferring type hints or even strong typing. 25+ years into my career as a programmer I think I may finally be coming around to preferring type hints or even strong typing. I resisted those in the past because they slowed down the rate at which I could iterate on code, especially in the REPL environments that were key to my productivity. But

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Key Insights

“25+ years into my career as a programmer I think I may finally be coming around to preferring type hints or even strong typing.” — The author reflects on their evolving preference for type hints in programming.
“But if a coding agent is doing all that typing for me, the benefits of explicitly defining all of those types are suddenly much more attractive.” — Considering the role of coding agents in making type hints more appealing.

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Topics

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Full Article

# Typing without having to type
Author: Simon Willison
Published: 2026-02-18
Source: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/18/typing/#atom-everything
25+ years into my career as a programmer I think I may finally be coming around to preferring type hints or even strong typing. I resisted those in the past because they slowed down the rate at which I could iterate on code, especially in the REPL environments that were key to my productivity. But if a coding agent is doing all that typing for me, the benefits of explicitly defining all of those types are suddenly much more attractive.

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Key Takeaways

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Notable Quotes

25+ years into my career as a programmer I think I may finally be coming around to preferring type hints or even strong typing.
Context: The author reflects on their evolving preference for type hints in programming.
But if a coding agent is doing all that typing for me, the benefits of explicitly defining all of those types are suddenly much more attractive.
Context: Considering the role of coding agents in making type hints more appealing.
  • [[topics/programming-productivity]]
  • [[topics/type-hints]]
  • [[topics/ai-agents]]

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Originally published at https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/18/typing/#atom-everything.