What does Python fix?

[Alex Martelli]

Mike C. Fletcher wrote:
        ...
> The greatest minds of all time have almost invariably failed to follow
> the cultural norms of their time.

Immanuel Kant is among my candidates for "greatest minds of
all time", and a good counter-example to this stereotype of the
genius as a rebel (a stereotype that's among those we still
suffer from the Romantic movement; Kant was by some measure
the last and greatest of the Enlightenment rationalists).  Of course
he's far from being the only one.

> respect we reserve for humans.  Top-posting is a trivial and arguable
> offense, some (myself included) even consider it the polite approach, we

It's arguable because we're arguing about it, but if it was really trivial, 
we wouldn't be arguing about it.

Whether a person is expressing himself or herself clearly and courteously
is among the "scoring" criteria I use, almost automatically, to decide how
to allocate my time among that person's posts and those of many others,
in terms of following them, trying to help, and so on.  Not the sole 
criterion, of course, but definitely not a trivial one either.  And I
consider that a person who is writing answers before questions, and
so on, is seriously failing on the clarity and courtesy issue.  Maybe it
would be appropriate in a group on Forth, surely not on a Python one.


Alex