Unexpected/undesirable `CAST` of date string to `VARCHAR`

[ccrvlh]

• asyncpg version: 0.29.0
• PostgreSQL version: 15.7
• Python version: 3.11
• Platform: macOS 13.6
• Do you use pgbouncer?: no
• Did you install asyncpg with pip?: no (poetry)

start_date = '2024-01-01'
query.where(MyTable.datetime_col >= start_date)

This will fail:

<class 'asyncpg.exceptions.UndefinedFunctionError'>: operator does not exist: timestamp without time zone >= character varying

It seems that this is being casted as VARCHAR:

SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE datetime_col >= $1::VARCHAR

This same filter is valid in Postgres

SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE datetime_col >= '2024-01-01'

It works when using the datetime object:

start_date = dt.datetime.strptime(start_date, "%Y-%m-%d")
query.where(MyTable.datetime_col >= start_date)

Wonder if this is somewhat similar to #1169 in the sense that casting/argument handling invalidates valid SQL statements.

I'd have imagined that castings were performed in obvious and non-breaking scenarios, and scenarios where casting would be necessary, but are not obvious should be handled directly by the user. Breaking valid SQL statements seems counter intuitive IMHO.