PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[Pearu Peterson]

On 1 Apr 2002, Steve Holden wrote:

> If you seriously think that a proposal from the language's principal
> designer would cause such massive code breakage, not to mention
> contradicting almost every published Python book, then you aren't reading
> the same newsgroup, or using the same language, as I am!

Don't know about the books (never read a Python one), but isn't some
major breakage expected in Python 3? So, I'll try to keep open mind to any
changes, good or bad, less surprises later...  I want my current code
running with Python oo too.

> > -1 --- I have succesfully programmed in Python without needing the bool
> > function and I share Ka-Ping's concerns about Python future. To me the
> > only reasonable point in rationale seems to be that "other languages have
> > or will have boolean". That also sounds quite weak to me --- other
> > languages have many useful concepts that would be more worth for
> > introducing to Python than this boolean concept.
> >
> The most reasonable point in the rationale to *me* was the "experience from
> teaching Python...".

Don't have one. So I missed that point. Python is more than just a first
language, right? For me Python is something like 10th language and I am
used to all kinds of weird (read: useful) stuff. Boolean in Python would 
not be weird enough that I could see it useful in the proposed form. If
True and False would be something unique, like None is currently, then I
could see the point introducing them. But with its integer nature, they
are just 1 and 0 to me (in the == sense), just exposed a bit differently.

So far I have learned to use almost all new features in Pyhton to make my
programs better (shorter, easier to maintain, readable, efficient). I find
very little to learn from PEP 285, just an additional concept to
remember without any apparent advantage.

> > 0  --- this PEP will be hardly rejected, it seems to me.
> >
> Again, I think you're being unfair to Guido. If the PEP is accepted ist will
> be because you are in a minority who think it will not result in improvement
> to the language (or at least will not degrade it at all).

I think that the story of this PEP would be much shorter if it would have
come from somebody else, especially, when considering such diverse
opinions, from -1 to +1, even among highly regarded Python
users/developers/educators. From what I have learned last years about
Python development (other people comments being the main source), then it
is not exactly a democratic process where majority rules.

And I didn't mean to be unfair to anyone. Without having a privilege to
know  Guido personally, I draw my conclusions assuming basic human
nature. Guido must be a human, I have seen his picture on Internet;-). I
can only trust that he is a super one.

> Did it catch you on a bad day?

Well, it didn't make my day any better...

Regards,
	Pearu