IsPython really O-O?

[Erik Max Francis]

Michael Hudson wrote:

	...
> > > Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:
> > >
> > > > 1) Python is more like Smalltalk that Python is like Java
> > > > 2) Python is more like Smalltalk than Java is like Smalltalk
	...
> No they don't.
> 
> 1) means
> 
> Smalltalk Python                        Java
>          ^                    ^
>       little gap           big gap
> 
> 2) means
> 
> Python Smalltalk                 Java
>       ^                    ^
>   little gap            big gap
> 
> both are true, but they're not the same.

I'm not sure what you intend to signify by the placement of the names on
the line.  Surely "X is like Y to degree Z" is symmetric with respect to
X and Y.  If X is very much like Y, then Y is very much like X; if X is
very different from Y, then Y is very different from X too.  In which
case the swapping of Smalltalk and Python on the above diagrams doesn't
mean anything and the two statements are in fact equivalent.

Unless you want to suggest that X can be very much like Y, but Y can be
very different from X, which doesn't make much sense.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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