Comment on PEP-0238
Guido van Rossum
guido at python.org
Fri Jun 29 08:47:01 EDT 2001
"Robert J. Harrison" <rjh at 3-cities.com> writes:
> From recent discussion it is not clear to me if
> PeP 0238 (http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html)
> has gained favor, or not.
>
> Two comments. First, its major emphasis is on benefitting
> inexperienced programmers, but, by being inconsistent with
> other mainstream languages, it is not clear to me that it
> is actually a benefit for them.
Perl is not mainstream? ;-)
> It is certainly not a benefit for experiencd programmers that
> routinely switch between Python and other languages.
Your argument ends up pleading to repeat the mistakes of other
languages -- in fact, taken to the extreme it would mean there should
be only on language. I don't find it a very strong argument.
> Second, even if the change of behavior for divide (/) is accepted, I
> see no point in introducing the // operator. A plethora of
> infrequently used operators will make Python more Perl-like. Better
> an explicit 'cast' to integer.
I agree here.
But, unless more people speak out in favor of this PEP, it's not going
to happen in Python 2.2 -- there's too much other stuff on the table
already.
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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