Amusingly, this is the other extreme from Diesel for Rust, discussed yesterday. This is the totally dynamic approach, while Diesel is the totally static approach.
That's a good point. As much as I love python, I think (for me) this illustrates why I tend to switch languages once I get over ~500-1000 lines. Seeing diesel was the exact opposite for me - total overkill when I just need a report, but very tempting if I'm going to have to evolve and maintain a larger code base.
The Python community just doesn't have good tools to type dictionaries. In JavaScript, you can use a tool like tcomb[1] that lets you specify the structure of your data and add functionality onto that data. Throwing raw dictionaries around in your program isn't maintainable, but if you adopt the Clojure ethos that functions operate on data that meets a set of requirements, you'll have maintainable code without a type system that gets in your way when you don't need it.
In general, I think most Python developers would be happier with Clojure or JavaScript written in a functional style (e.g. heavy use of tcomb, Immutable.js, and transducers). I'm happier, at least.
