other python ideas

[Douglas Alan]

Steve Purcell <stephen_purcell at yahoo.com> writes:

> And equally, no programming language has ever been (or will ever be)
> perfected, so it's not to anyone's benefit to pretend that such
> perfection is possible! <wink>

But many, many languages have been improved over time.  Sometimes the
newer version of the language is even more true to the language's
original spirit than the original language itself.  E.g., Lisp ->
Scheme.

> In my experience, extra language features tend to mean extra magic,
> and I'm usually too dumb to understand all that voodoo stuff. That's
> why I ended up using Python more than any other language...

That's why language design is an art, and every feature needs to be
considered very carefully.  That's why in trade for the feature I
want, I suggest removing another feature in trade.  Of course, this
makes it a proposal only to be really considered for a new but
different Python-like language, or for Python 3k.

Also, sometimes adding a language feature makes the language
conceptually simpler, rather than more complicated.  For instance, if
Python supported lexical closures, this would make it cleaner and more
elegant.  It would remove the necessary voodoo of using unactualized
optional arguments in nested functions.

There are some features of Python that in my opinion should be *removed*
for Python 3k.  Python has some excess flexibility that is only rarely
useful but makes it difficult for a compiler to generate efficient
code.  Should we want Python to achieve world domination, this is
probably an important consideration.

|>oug