On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 5:37 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas@gmail.com> wrote:
You have to show that decimal isn't just marginally better than hex; you have to show that there are situations where the value of decimal character literals is so great that it's worth forcing everyone to learn two systems. And I'm not convinced you've even hit the first point.
Frankly I don't fully understand your point here.
Let me clarify. When you construct a string, you can already use escapes to represent characters: "n\u0303" --> n followed by combining tilde In order to be consistent with other languages, Python *has* to support hexadecimal. Plus, Python has _already_ supported hex for some time. To establish decimal as an alternative, you have to demonstrate that it is worth having ANOTHER way to do this. With completely green-field topics, you can debate the merits of one notation against another, and the overall best one will win. But when there's a well-established existing notation, you have to justify the proliferation of notations. You have to show that your new format is *so much* better than the existing one that it's worth adding it in parallel. That's quite a high bar - not impossible, obviously, but you need some very strong justification. At the moment, you're showing minor advantages to decimal, and other people are showing minor advantages to hex; but IMO nothing yet has been strong enough to justify the implementation of a completely new way to do things - remember, people have to understand *both* in order to read code. ChrisA