PEP scepticism

Robin Becker robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk
Sat Jul 7 05:44:37 EDT 2001


In article <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list at python.org>, Thomas
Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes
>On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 04:41:43PM +0100, Robin Becker wrote:
>
>> Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them to be
>> uniformly wrong.
>
>While I couldn't help but have a good, long, uproarish laugh about this
>comment (recent readers of python-dev will know why ;) I don't think you're
>right in this. I'm not a historian, but I do believe leaders aren't
>generally seen as dictators unless they were proven wrong.
>
>Guido may be the BDFL, but he *does* listen. He may disagree, like in this
>thread, but at least he has considered the issue. Guido the Dictator made
>Python, and shaped Python into what it is right now, a damned great and
>*fun* language that you can show to your family/colleagues/total strangers
>and be proud about.
>
the reason why dictators always know best is that they define 'best';
they often redefine history as well. In the present case since you bring
it up we observe that the BDFL has faults because Python isn't perfect.
I'm probably wrong about that as it's conceivable that Guido is
optimally tracking the needs of some group of target users, I doubt it
though :) unless the group is of unit size.

My take on the language is that it's quite good, but no one has yet
written a love poem in Python.

The language is evolving as all languages do because of the needs of its
users. Five years ago the leadership said integer division was good,
today it's bad; the audience changed is all. 
-- 
Robin Becker



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