Parrot... is Python dead now?

[Mike Clarkson]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2001 21:20:48 -0400, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:

>"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>>     while left_angle_right_angle:
>> 
>> was a significant step backwards from both Perl's
>> 
>>     while (<>) {
>> 
>> and Python's
>> 
>>     for line in sys.stdin.xreadlines():
>
>Except, that I had always thought the names of the < and > characters were 
>"bra" and "ket", which would naturally lead to
>
>   while braket:
>
>no?

Not quite.  You see for some years now, Python has been making
substantial inroads into the Physics community. For the first time
since FORTRAN, that have a programming language that treats ** 
the way that God intented, *and* has the block structure from Algol,
which revives in many of them an almost tearful nostalgia for old
Burroughs machines.

Now having taken the notion of Computer Programming for Everyone
quite seriously, and as many of them have read Dirac's classic work on
the Principles of Quantum Mechanics, in which he introduces the <bra|
and the |ket>, they know that from fundamental principles it should be
written as:

	while < | >:

Although the meaning of this is not immediately apparent (never a
problem in quantum mechanics), due to recent progress with many of the
brightest minds in quantum mechanics, they were able to see that the
correct interpretation can be given by slightly broadening the concept
of import:

	from __future__ choose *
	while < | >:

where * is any of the worlds in Everett's Many Worlds Interptetation
of Quantum Mechanics. The truly dynamic nature of Python is shown in:

	from __future__ choose rand()
	while < | >:

where rand() generates a random (complex) vector in Hilbert space.

Mike.