[Edu-sig] The fate of raw_input() in Python 3000

[kirby urner]

On 9/9/06, Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:
> kirby urner wrote:
>
> >
> >import math
> >math.cos( 90 * math.degrees)
> >
> >-- that's what a first class might include.  If what stops 'em isn't
> >the Python syntax, but the trig, then we go over the trig.  Basic
> >numeracy.  All as a bundle.  Not your grandfathers math class (but
> >some hoped it'd be for their kids -- remember when the future was,
> >well, futuristic?).
> >

> How you manage to tangle your sensible and salable ideas into a
> rhetorical jumble that makes them sound a lot more dazed, dazzling,
> and  unsaleable they then are on their merits - confounds me.
>

What's so unsensible about using Python as a calculator in math class
for starters?  That's how Guido's tutorial begins.  You don't do
anything but quote, then launch the following diatribe:

> I am convinced that the problem is that you have engaged the wrong
> enemy.  It is not the school board of Hodunk, Missouri..Talked to with
> respect for your joint mission of the welfare of their charges, and your
> sensible ideas presented without your form of  Princetonian arrogance -
> I see a team.

I never mentioned fighting a school board in Missouri, now did I.
Trying to pull the wool, hey?

> Your problem is the radical constructivists.  You believe in *typing*,
> you talk about *mathematical ideas* - trigonometry, even - rather than
> "analytical skills", which of course means everything and nothing at the
> same time.

I'm willing to compete in this rarified rhetorical way, sure, but more
I'm just into making raw_input seem ridiculous and unsophisticated.
Combat that however you may.  Maybe Ruby has raw_input?

> They are better funded.  You cannot afford your arrogance if you are at
> all serious about competing.  But then I don't believe you are actually
> trying to win.  Would take a kind of discipline that you exhibit does
> not interest you.
>
> Just getting your rocks off?
>
> Art

You presume I'm fighting some school board, whereas in Portland we're
just seeing more and more ways to get our open source capital on the
map, *and* to save a bundle, by going with free software (not taking
credit for all this momentum by the way -- maybe why you think I'm
arrogant is because you live on the other coast, the more backward
one. :-D).

Kirby