PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[John Roth]

"Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com> wrote in message
news:3CA75DAC.17647CEA at alcyone.com...
> Ralph Corderoy wrote:
>
> > Terry Reedy wrote:
> >
> > > C. Anyone learning Python has some idea of truth and truth values.
> > > But I am sure there are some with no idea of what 'bool' means and
> > > only a vague idea about 'Boolean'.  Better formalizing Python
truth
> > > values should make them even easier to learn; why not call them
what
> > > they are?
> >
> > That's an excellent point, as are the others you make.  My Mum would
> > understand true but not bool or Boolean.
>
> I'm not really sure how beneficial this would be.  In the real world,
> not everything about a programming language -- even a low-overhead
> language like Python -- can be instantly intuited by non-programmers.
> After some elementary level they're going to have to start reading.
> That bool (or boolean) is a Boolean type is not a hard concept to get
> across, and I don't see how calling it "truth" is really all that much
> more helpful.
>
> It's far better, in my opinion, to give it a standard name from
computer
> science (bool or boolean) and let new programmers take the tiny little
> steps (in this case) to add a new word to their vocabulary -- a word
> that will help them in future explorations of programming and computer
> science, no less.

The trouble is that 'bool' as a data type **isn't** the standard
name from mathematics. Correct usage is something like:
"Boolean logic manipulates truth values." That is, the data
type is a truth value (see, for example, "truth table".) The usage
in programming languages is simply incorrect linguistically.

Python has always had Boolean logic - and, or not and
so forth. What's being added is the truth data type.

> Excessive attempts to make terms more approachable can lead to
disaster
> in the degenerate case, resulting in just a new form of terminology
that
> now nobody understands.

But nobody has suggested calling it the Aristotelian data type.

John Roth