PEP0238 lament

[Steven D. Majewski]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> The response was to your [Tim] statement:
> 
>     Tim> Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in numerics has bugged Guido
>     Tim> about this except Moshe, that I know of; the most visible repeated
>     Tim> pressures have come from educators using Python as a means to some
>     Tim> other end.
> 
> Perhaps I was wrong about some of Guido's influences in this area.  Anyone
> doing 3D computer graphics whether in the context of engineering, computer
> art or education has, in my mind, a keen interest in numerics in the sense
> of "numerical analysis".  They are going to do a lot of floating point math
> and much less integer math.

This was an issue for the Alice implementors, but it's not supposed to
be for Alice users/scripters. The target users were arts majors,
animators, writers, artists, etc. ( Don't know how well they found or
served that audience, but that was the target -- not computer graphics 
gurus. BTW: Randy Pausch's  Lab (when he was at UVA) had a photo of Doug 
Engelbart in one corner and Walt Disney in the other -- the "patron
saints" of that project! ) 


-- Steve Majewski