[Edu-sig] python versus __python__

[Arthur]

Kirby -

>PS:  since you've been studying subclassing primitive types using __new__,
>maybe you could show us a user-defined floating point type that reports two
>numbers equal if their absolute value difference is less than e.  Anyone?

My studies on the subject of subclassing the complex type have been quickly 
abandoned - it becoming clear that the fact the .real and .imag are read-only 
defeats the ideas I had for it.  I guess I might have tried harder to see if
one could override that behavior in a subclass, but my decision to move on
is based on the fact that if what I like to think I am pursuing is simplicity, 
changing the  fundamental behavior of a built-in, even if doable, would 
not seem to be a path to it.

But as these dead-end explorations usually do, got me thinking about things not
previously confronted.  Like the simple question of what is "float" fundamentally, 
a function - as in float(1) - or a numeric type.  And by subclassing "float", is one
subclassing a function or a type. 

Is just some shadowing of a name going on in the netherworld, or are the function 
and type more intimately related in that realm?

Us non C programmers look forward to PyPy for the view of the netherworld it will
give us.  In truth I expect PyPy to bring a new burst of creative energy to the
Python world, just by opening up the possibility of lower level exploration to 
a wider group of folks.

As the answer to most of the "why Python" questions that we all try to answer
on some technical level, in the end - IMO - boil done to largely that, the creative
energy surrounding it.

Perhaps that understanding should provoke me into whining less about the moving
target that Python seems sometimes to be.  Perhaps Guido understands either consciously or 
intuitively that less openness to change - with all the downsides of such change -
would subvert that essential energy aura in which Python persists.

Art