PEP0238 lament

Duncan Booth duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk
Wed Jul 25 03:59:07 EDT 2001


Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote in 
news:3B5DBAC8.4B89E271 at alcyone.com:

> I find it pretty horrifying that this change is even being seriously
> considered much less is evidently going forward.  That I find the
> benefits (namely, making the language easier for novices to understand;
> integer division is not very hard to understand and have not known
> anybody learning programmer for which this was absolutely a deal breaker
> and totally inhibited their ability to learn a language) to be of
> dubious value only makes it more disturbing.

When it comes down to it, real beginners (5 to 7 years old?) will have been 
told that if you divide 9 by 2 you get 4 with 1 left over. Which is EXACTLY 
what you get at present. Floating point is a MUCH more sophisticated 
concept which, as has been shown repeatedly on this newsgroup, is hard even 
for most programming professionals.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?



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