Python has typing hints which mypy uses. It's similar to something javascripts wants to introduce call type annotations. It also has linters and formatters (ruff which does the work of multiple tools in one and is very fast). It also has unit tests built in as well as popular test libraries like pytest and nox and tox for running tests.

It is up to the maintainers to use the tools they have been given to make projects maintainable. I have worked on and seen very maintainable python projects of various sizes. While legacy code is always a bit of a nightmare (python 2 and < python 3.6), it doesn't have to be that way and getting into a python project nowadays is way easier than most other languages I've tried (maybe also because it's what I know well).

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