Design-by-Committee

[Michael Hudson]

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> > The only thing I really dislike in the changes since 1.5.2 is oddly enough
> > unicode support, which AMK in a later posting declared the most important
> > feature since 1.5.2 <wink>. I doubt I will ever need to use unicode, so
> > *to me*, it's a waste of resources.
> 
> You'll never need to handle XML files, for example?  Unicode is how
> they're typically stored.  Never need for your apps to work in Osaka,
> or to work both in Paris and Prague handling the same textfiles so
> ISO-8859-1 does not suffice?  Never need to drive a COM server or
> implement one?  And I think XPCOM uses Unicode like COM (not sure).

I'm not Thomas (obviously) but I can easily think of places you might
use Python where you don't need unicode.  Scientific computing and
sysadmin-style duct tape are just two that spring to mind almost
immediately.  I don't *think* Thomas was suggesting that adding
Unicode was a mistake.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  languages shape the way we think, or don't.
                                        -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp