[Python-Dev] [slighly OT] Native speakers and hurting brains

[Boris Borcic]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On 7/5/06, Michael Chermside <mcherm at mcherm.com> wrote:
>> Guido writes:
>>    [discussion of how to fix the can't-bind-outer-scope-vars wart]
...
> 
> Are there any other native speakers who side with Michael?
> 

A bit OT, but why should native speakers (eg of English) have special authority 
? I mean this neither as an attack on native speakers nor as a rethorical question.

I recently re-read the "sum()" discussion to figure out how it came about that 
sum() half bails out on sequences_of_sequences (by requiring me to specify the 
start value) except when the nested sequences are strings, in which cases it 90% 
bails out : by first asking for an adequate start value, and *then* - once I've 
provided it - telling me it understands my intent but that I should use ''.join 
instead. Is this a programming language shell or a text-based adventure game ? 
<0.8 wink>

AFAICT, the cause of this funny strangeness is that a very respected member of 
pydev and native speaker of English with an truly unique sense of humor, found 
early in the discussion that sum(sequence_of_strings) "made his brain hurt"; and 
while this person is the very opposite of a newbie, his judgment was combined 
with concerns relating to newbies to result in the current behavior.

I believe that in this case native linguistic intuition made the decision... and 
that a non-native intuition should have reversed it by noting in due time that 
the cognitive dissonance that native speakers could find to sum(seq_of_str), 
isn't in fact distinct from the cognitive dissonance that any newbie should find 
to the use of the + operator to concatenate strings or sequences rather than 
summing numbers.

To restate, as a non-native speaker, and inasmuch "it hurts the brain" is the 
real reason against sum(seq_of_str) calling ''.join(seq_of_str) directly, I 
believe this is a case of excess authority being given to native linguistic 
intuition (of english speaking python experts) with the result of /adding/ to 
the cognitive dissonance of using + to concatenate strings (for all programming 
newbies).

Best regards to all,

Boris Borcic
--
"On naît tous les mètres du même monde"