[Python-Dev] copy, len and the like as 'object' methods?

[Paul Prescod]

David Ascher wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Not much to tell.  Randal was polite in my class and didn't interrupt
> too much =).  

Randal was polite in general but there was a point where he interjected:
"And you say *Perl* has a lot of special cases? Python seems to have
just as many!" 

These "function syntaxed methods" are one example but there are others.
Some of the others are convenient (e.g. special casing of non-tuples
after %) and some are backwards compatibility issues.

Also, every time we'd point to a feature of Python (OO syntax, exception
handling, generators, *) that was clearly better than Perl, Randal
claimed it was already slated to be fixed for Perl 6. We suggested he
print t-shirts with that refrain.

> ... There were some interesting discussions between Paul
> Prescod, Cameron Laird, Damian Conway, Mark-Jason Dominus, Randal and
> myself about Perl 6, which is looking more and more like Python from
> what I can tell. 

My sense was "Second System Syndrome" but Damian Conway is confident
that they don't have that problem.

* from my point of view it seemed that we agreed that Python was better
than Perl at almost everything but then I didn't sit in on Damian's
"Data Munging" talk.
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