[Python-Dev] Summary: rejection of 'dynamic attribute' syntax

[Guido van Rossum]

On 2/14/07, glyph at divmod.com <glyph at divmod.com> wrote:
> What I was trying to say there is that the proposal of new ideas should not
> begin with "Hey, I think this might be 'good'" - that's too ill defined.  It
> should be, "I noticed (myself/my users/my students/other open source
> projects) writing lots of code that looks like *this*, and I think it would
> be a real savings if it could look like *that*, instead".

Yup.

> Some
> back-of-the-envelope math might be nice, in terms of savings of lines of
> code, or an explanation of the new functionality that might be enabled by a
> feature.

Well, savings in lines of code per se aren't high on my list; savings
in conceptual difficulty understanding the code is. Sometimes savings
in writing (if they don't go against the savings in understanding) are
also important; especially avoiding distractions like having to stop
working on the current algorithm in order to figure out how to best
write some simple bookkeeping code, etc. (You seem to agree to some
extent later, but I think it's worth mentioning my own standards here.
:-)

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)