[Edu-sig] re: Typed arrays (not about div)

[Kirby Urner]

At 10:25 PM 10/11/2002 -0400, Arthur wrote:

>*I* am not bringing div into the behavior of typed arrays.  Why the hell
>would I.  What I said was:
>
> >Huh? under new "/"
> >ouch - I should have seen that coming under old "/"

What you said was kind of elliptical (English major talk), but it
*does* mention "/", as if this were somehow relevant.

Forgive me, but I thought you were saying the old "/" would have
been an implied "heads up" (and as to why 'a' becomes 97 when
assigned to b[1] in Numeric? -- I don't think so).

After all, I'd asked you what a new gotcha associated the new
"/" might be, and this was your reply.  Now you say:  "*I* am
not bringing div into the behavior of typed arrays" -- but this
*was* a typed array, and you *were* showing it's behavior.
Forgive me for being confused.

Your argument seems to boil down to:  as long as stuff keeps
knocking me on the head, I'll remember to be careful.  So therefore
an intelligently designed language will deliberately knock me
on the head.

>The "fun" I keep referring to is the fun of making the whirlygig go 'round.

Lost ya.

What I did understand was:

"Reserve the right to mouth off only when a PEP addresses the
needs of beginners as the *prime* motivation of a foundation
level change." (you, in an earlier post).

And Tim recently says "A reasonable person could have concluded
that Guido was *primarily* motivated by that at the time."

So I see you as consistent in your mouthing off.  When it comes
to newbies and their experiences, you're entitled to a voice.
You've self-taught your way into becoming the guy behind a
sophisticated and one-of-a-kind 3D geometry package of which
you are rightly proud (takes a lot of smarts to do that, no
question).  And you have wisely limited your scope.  Nothing
irrational so far.

But I also see that, since then (since Guido was brought to the
div question by newbies), the mainline div discussion has taken
several twists and turns which eventually took it *out* of your
self-proclaimed territory.  It's not really about newbies and
their experiences any more.

>What I am pointing to here is a practical point of the most fundamental
>kind.  It *doesn't* make me right about the "/" operator.  But you keep
>telling me you have *no* idea what I am saying, and I can't understand why.
>
>Art

I've not said you have *no* idea what you're saying.  You have some
very definite ideas.  But you yourself have said it might not be
right.  So I'm agreeing with you there:  it's not right.

Thanks to Tim for the Mona Lisa URL (not sure I'm persuaded by the
GIF though -- almost *any* two faces, properly aligned, can be smoothly
connected by a good morphing program (but I'm sure there must be more
to it than that)).

Kirby