> If you're happy with this interface (strings to create an array) then I'm not going to push

To be clear, it's definitely not intended to be the normal usage! But if something can be treated as an int why not let people use it?

But the alternatives seem to be:
 - rule out anything which isn't an `int` (possibly allowing `np.integer` as well),
 - only rule out strings.

Is there another option you had in mind?