On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Guido van Rossum
Referencing Java here is absurd and I still consider this suggestion as a troll. Python is not in any way based on Java.
I did not suggest that. Sorry if it came out this way. I am well aware that Python and Java were invented independently and have different roots. (IIRC, Java was born from Oak and Python from ABC and Oak and ABC were both developed in the 1980s.) IEEE 784 precedes both languages and one team decided that equality reflexivity for hashable objects was more important than IEEE 784 compliance while the other decided otherwise. Many Python features (mostly library) are motivated by C. In the 90s, "because C does it this way" was a good explanation for a language feature. Doing things differently from the "C way", on the other hand would deserve an explanation. These days, C is rarely first language that a student learns. Hopefully Python will take this place in not so distant future, but many students graduated in late 90s - early 2000s knowing nothing but Java. As a result, these days it is a valid question to ask about a language feature: "Why does Python do X differently from Java?" Hopefully in most cases the answer is "because Python does it better." In case of nan != nan, I would really like to know a modern reason why Python's way is better. Better compliance with a 20-year old standard does not really qualify.