[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 326 now online

[Josiah Carlson]

> If that's "intuitive" to you, our ideas about language design must be
> so different that I have low hopes for something useful coming out of
> this.

I don't know about that; until this thread, I've basically agreed with
every direction Python has gone in the 5 years since I started using it,
but that is a one-way relationship.

Overloading min and max was one option, among quite a few, that would
have resulted in min and max being what they do.  You seem to hate it,
so those of us who desire the functionality will seek other alternatives...


> > Are you against the *idea* of a top and bottom value, its location, or
> > both?
> 
> So far *all* of the names that have been proposed for the concept
> suck, starting with "Some" and "Any", and now various ways to abuse
> builtins.
> 
> I am not against the concept of a universal extreme by itself, but
> IMO their use is fairly infrequent (except in your mind perhaps,
> because you've clearly become obsessed with it), so it should not be a
> builtin, nor disguised as a builtin.

Just so you know, I'm not obsessed with it.  As my wife just pointed out,
anything that I believe in, I go "balls-to-the-walls" arguing for
regardless of consequences.   Sometimes it alienates people; seemingly I
have alienated you.  I'm sorry if this is the case.


> How about you write the Python code to implement proper universal
> extremes, put it in a module, and submit that module for inclusion
> of the standard library.  Then my resistence would be a lot less
> (until Raymond Hettinger offers to reimplement it in C :-).
> 
> Hey, universalextremes.py seems a fine name for that module, and
> UniversalMaximum and UniversalMinimum seem fine names for the two
> objects in that module.

Sounds reasonable.  Until my changes are available from CVS, you can
catch the latest revision here
http://josiahcarlson.no-ip.org/pep-0326.html
which includes a sample implementation that could be easily placed into
a universalextremes.py.

Off list, Andrew Lentvorski has suggested operator.Min/Max as a location,
which also sounds reasonable, but I don't know others feel about
locating it in operators.

 - Josiah