a comment about PEPs

[Andrew Dalke]

phil hunt:
>Whenever I have a peek at c.l.p, there are usually several threads going
>suggesting improvements to the langauge.
>
>Why is this?

Here's a few I've seen.

 - Python isn't perfect (type/class dichotomy, rich comparisons)

 - There are bugs in the C implementation (xrange, list.append)

 - Some other languages have neat features which people miss when
    they switch to Python (nested static scopes, lazy iterators)

 - People don't know the history of a thread, and keep reviving it
    OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER (eg, using something other than
    indentation for scope)

 - Some think that needs of a small domain are needs of a general
    programming language (switch statements are useful for state
    machines, but are they useful for Python?; if cgi.py is imported
    then the traceback display hook should display output to HTML)

 - Others don't realize a specific need can be done in other ways
    (Java-style interfaces)

 - With extra hints provided by the language, different
    implementations could work better (explicit type declarations
    can help a hypothetical Python compiler produce machine code)

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com