[Python-Dev] PEP 246, redux

[Alex Martelli]

On 2005 Jan 14, at 04:08, David Ascher wrote:

> Alex Martelli wrote:
>
>> Yes, there is (lato sensu) "non-determinism" involved, just like in, 
>> say:
>>     for k in d:
>>         print k
>
> Wow, it took more than the average amount of googling to figure out 
> that lato sensu means "broadly speaking",

Ooops -- sorry; I wouldn't have imagined Brazilian hits would swamp the 
google hits to that extent, mostly qualifying post-grad courses and the 
like... seems to be an idiom there for that.

>  and occurs as "sensu lato" with a 1:2 ratio.

In Latin as she was spoken word order is very free, but the issue here 
is that _in taxonomy specifically_ (which was the way I intended the 
form!) the "sensu lato" order vastly predominates.  Very exhaustive 
discussion of this word order choice in taxonomy at 
<http://www.forum-one.org/new-1967018-4338.html>, btw (mostly about 
"sensu scricto", the antonym).

> I learned something today! ;-)

Me too: about Brazilian idiom, and about preferred word-order use in 
Aquinas and Bonaventura.

Also, a reflection: taxonomy, the classification of things (living 
beings, rocks, legal precedents, ...) into categories, is a discipline 
with many, many centuries of experience behind it.  I think it is 
telling that taxonomists found out they require _two_ kinds of 
``inheritance'' to do their job (no doubt there are all kind of 
_nuances_, but specialized technical wording exists for two kinds: 
"strict-sense" and "broad-sense")... they need to be able to assert 
that "A is a B _broadly speaking_" (or specifically "_strictly 
speaking_") so often that they evolved specific terminology.  Let's 
hope it doesn't take OOP many centuries to accept that both "stricto 
sensu inheritance" (Liskovianly-correct) AND "lato sensu inheritance" 
are needed to do _our_ jobs!-)


Alex