[Edu-sig] RE: PEP0238 lament

[Tim Peters]

[Paul Prescod]
> This issue is constantly presented as some sort of dichotomy between
> "regular" programmers" and newbies. But really it is more of a
> dichotomy between those originally trained on typed languages and
> those on dynamically typed languages.

Excellent point, Paul!  The newbies get dumped on because they're the only
ones impudent enough to complain about it -- Guido hasn't crushed their
spirits yet <wink>.

> The other languages in the Python category (Perl, Ruby, JavaScript,
> ...) all make a different choice for division and the choice is
> uncontroversial. Python is the only one of the languages that has a
> constant battle on the issue.

It suggests Python may want to leap to what Perl eventually added:  a
directive akin to Perl's "use integer;".  In Python's case I really don't
see any other way to prevent large scale code breakage as the years roll by.