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

[Arthur]

kirby urner wrote:

> Just keeping stuff the same is comfortable and comforting.  All you
> need for a conspiracy is a shared tacit investment in "not rocking the
> boat".  Nothing deeply sinister.  But the consequences may be
> nevertheless ugly.
>
Somehow can't let this go.

I keep thinking that your analysis here  is  confounded with  your  
Fullerism, which is  why  I come at it a bit and  try  to  encourage 
you  to  separate it from your  interest in  programming/math 
synergies.   Not asking or expecting you to compromise your Fuller 
crusade. Just separate the crusades a bit.  The fact is, despite how I 
might sound, my general associations with Fuller are positive -  as a 
freewheeling intelligence, as an "adventurous explorer".  Caution to the 
wind. But if  we  take  someone  like Kay  - who I think I can see more 
clearly - as a similar spirit, I think we tend to get some who,  out of 
lack of caution , will be  the most right  in  some cases, the most 
wrong in others.

Like you and like I, on edu-sig.

Separate the fact that Fuller has not gotten the recognition you feel he 
has earned within the academic community, and I think your analysis 
would be different.

I'm all for conspiracy theories.  There is little else to fall back on 
when one feels that things have gone terribly wrong.  We seem to share 
some feelings that things have.

I guess I fall back on the simplest possibility - follow the money.

The possibility that the Python prompt might be the kind of tool most 
effective in an educational setting is a tremendous threat.  It's not 
only the fact that it is free, it is the fact that is not even software 
in the sense that the software industry wants us to believe is necessary 
for this kind of assignment.  The are many billions of dollars at 
stake.  Much else follows from there.

It is for others to decide whether my incautious statements along these 
lines might have some ring of truth.

Art