Voting for PEP 308 (was Re: For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression)

[Laura Creighton]

> My sense of the many hundreds of posts is that most of the people who don't 
> care what the construct looks like also don't care much if it gets in or not.

Most of the people who don't care will also not be posting.  Or
voting. They're probably not reading comp.lang.python, either.  I
remember when 2.0 came out and people found out about string methods.
A whole bunch of them came back to post articles about how they
thought the new join syntax was really awful and ugly.  They only
cared after it got in, but enough to complain a lot.

> 
> > But it is hellish for the people who have a beauty
> > threshhold for any new language feature.  I don't suspect they are
> > a small number.  [...]  Like any
> > other 'third party' in a parliamentary procedure, why shouldn't they
> > hold out for concessions on the 'beautiful' front?  
> 
> The trouble is, "beauty" is largely subjective and in this context generally 
> simply boils down to a opinion about personal preferance.

This is an argument that such things should not be decided by popular
vote, and I agree.  That being said, I think that we have broad
consensus here that perl is an *ugly* language to use.  People who
switched from Perl in order to have a beautiful language to use every
day, voted their personal preference with their feet.  If they decide
that Python has become too ugly and they get a more beautiful
alternative, they will vote with their feet again.

> 
> That being said, I count myself both in the 'beauty' party and the pro-308 
> camp.  I intend to vote against any proposal that is the least bit kludgy.
> 
> Regards
> 
> --jb

Laura