Python hits the spot

[Antaeus Feldspar]

Siegfried Gonzi wrote:

	[snip]

> Thank you Billy Boy for a forgiving user system Windows XP which in turn
> relieves Python's "wreak havoc" behavior.


	[snip]


You know, a month or so ago, I was listening to complaints from a webpage builder 

that of all the Web browsers out there, only Internet Explorer rendered his 

friend's HTML code "correctly".  When he was pressed for what the other browsers

did "incorrectly", it turned out that the would-be web-maven wanted to 
be able to use the digit "0" and the letter "O" interchangeably in 
hexadecimal values -- not because there was any particular benefit to 
mixing-and-matching, merely because they were used to be careless about 
such things.  Internet Explorer was the only one that accepted such 
behavior without even an alert that it was wrong.

"Forgiving"?  Or enabling?

One hard-won piece of wisdom I've learned about computer interfaces over 
the years is "people learn by doing; if you allow them to do it the 
wrong way, they learn to do it wrong."  Even if you say "In this case, 
it doesn't make a difference, so why not?" that only builds in bad 
habits that compound on each other until the time comes that it *does* 
make a difference.  That's the hard lesson that has been learned about 
safety systems, is that building in six layers of safety to protect 
workers from the consequences of their actions will in fact train 
workers to get all six wrong at once.

	-jc