Deposing Dictators

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]

25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC) in <9jmjne$q54$1 at wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>,
margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk <margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> spake:
> The next features of Python will see several types of changes, which
> seem to been implmented and accepted into the language without 
> discussion.

  Without discussion?  You need to get your newsfeed/mail agent fixed.
Or visit <http://groups.google.com/>.  Or return forthwith to your
native universe or the nearest convenient parallel dimension.  Choose
one or more.

> Without getting into the arguments for and against a change, I would
> note that changing the semantics of a core part of the language is
> basically equivalent to creating a new language. Python with / and //
> operators in the form currently envisaged is, frankly, not Python at
> all.

  This is nonsense.  I use classic integer division rather heavily, so
this change affects me directly, and while I'm not *happy* with the new
meaning being the default, Guido's explained his reasoning well; I can't
see any better solution to the unified Number type problem.  And yet
"Python With //" still looks like Python to me.  Python changed just as
much or more from 1.5 to 2.0...

> 1) New versions of 'Python' are not 'Python', and should be indicated
> as such -- perhaps by calling it 'Python++' :)

  Or, and this is just a wild and crazy idea that could *NEVER* fly in
reality, by changing the major version number to 3?

> This new version of Python will not be one that I will be happy to use. 

  Because the integer division operator changed?  <blink>  I'd heard of
neophobia, but...

> If there are enough people who feel as I do, then perhaps we will be
> able to depose the dictatorship,

  "I come here today not to praise Guido, but to bury him...", et tu?

> and create a stable and sensible 
> system for developing Python (not Python++). If this means forking 
> Python, then that will be done.

  I believe the license allows you to fork it already.  Feel free.  Go
to, sirrah, go to.

  But I'm curious...  how exactly do you propose to "develop" a language
that cannot change?

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39