Functionalism, aesthetics Was:(RE: I come to praise .join, not

[Remco Gerlich]

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> So why did the elitist design look better?  Perhaps because it's a
> common subconscious mechanism to prefer the luxury good, even
> when in actual fact one won't be able to take advantage of it, as
> a wishful-thinking byproduct.  Remember that human beings are
> quite prone to a few well-known systematic perception errors --
> and it takes LOTS of training to teach one of us to stop making
> them.  Thus, a design which happens to hit squarely on the button
> one of those common perception errors may well be quite pleasing,
> superficially, to the untrained masses -- only highly experienced
> professionals really stand a chance to smell something fishy with
> it. 

"For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong",
right?

-- 
Remco Gerlich