A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)

[Alex Martelli]

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpr8vnh6ln.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
> > But it is Guido's language and Guido's call.  Just wish it was
> > all just left to his own sense of design elegance, which there
> > is reason to trust - rather his public justifications, which I
> > never find very satisfactory.
>
> Good point, Art.  I trust my intuition more than my reasoning in these
> things, and often when I try to defend my intuition against
> challenges, what comes out are unsatisfactory rationalizations.
> Sometimes Tim's "channelings" say it better than I could have said it
> myself...  :-)

Being a great designer (or other kind of decision-maker) and
being a good rationalizer/evangelist/salesperson/marketeer are
really separate skills, and pretty much uncorrelated ones to
boot.  People in general just won't accept that, which of
course suits us good rationalizers just fine (as we often get
credited for better decisions than we actually make, just
because we rationalize better than others do:-).


Alex