[Python-3000] New section for PEP 3124

[Greg Ewing]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 03:16 PM 7/24/2007 -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
>>I'm confused why you spend so much time refuting the argument,
> 
> The purpose was to capture the arguments on both sides for posterity 
> as part of the PEP.

I don't think you need to spend so many words on the
argument itself -- a one-paragraph summary would be
enough.

The parts outlining recommended practice for overloading
look useful, though. This is the sort of thing I was
after with my "What methodology can I follow?" question.

But I would phrase it in an "It is recommended that..."
kind of way rather than making assertions about what
"can be found" in code (that doesn't exist yet in
Python).

> For example, epydoc and pydoc contain functions that inspect the type 
> of their arguments in order to decide what to with them.  While it's 
> arguable that in a GF world, the authors *should* have made those 
> functions overloadable, it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to 
> rewrite their code to make everything overloadable, nor to correctly 
> anticipate every function for which extension might be needed.

However, given the existence of GFs, someone writing
something like pydoc, and coming to a point where he is
about to write an if-else statement that switches on
a type, perhaps ought to at least suspect that it might
be a good idea to use a GF instead?

--
Greg