[Python-ideas] Retire or reword the "Beautiful is better than ugly" Zen clause

[Chris Barker]

On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 7:38 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

> To be fair, in my
> > experience this has been a source of confusion to many Python
> > newcomers, as the notion of "beauty", as with any other value
> > judgment, is highly relative to the subject evaluating it.


Indeed is *is* subjective -- as is "Pythonic", or "elegant", or other
concept of that nature -- that is intentional.

"efficient is better than inefficient" kind of goes without saying...

What this merely shows, IMHO, is that writing programming slogans or
> jokes on clothing you wear in public is stupid. Most people who see
> them won't understand a word of them, and in some cases may badly
> misinterpret them as your example shows.
>
> I used to think I was the only one for whom conference t-shirts could
> only serve as pyjamas,


well, I see them as my "geek cred" t-shirts, and part of the point is that
only those those "in the know" will get it.

So I don't think this says anything about wearing clothing that refers to a
particular group is bad, but that one shoudl be caefule about whicj slogans
you display out of context. If teh shirt said"

"beuatiful code is better than ugly code"

I don't think there would be an issue.

As to the OP's point:

We now have anecdotal evidence that "beautiful is better than ugly" can be
offensive out of context. Other than that, we have people "suspecting" or
"imagining" that some people "may" find it offensive in context.

I try never to speak for others when saying whether something is
troublesome to a community, but if we have exactly zero actual cases of
someone finding it personally offensive (in context), I think we'd be going
a bit overboard in making any changes.

Is it any better to make a change that has not been asked for by imagining
other's sensitivities than it is to ignore others' sensitivities?

-CHB


-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

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