For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression

[Paul Rubin]

"Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> writes:
> > This is such a daft argument. If the lowest common denominator is to
> > dictate language complexity then we'd better all give up now.
> 
>   - this isn't 'lowest common deminator'
>   - this isn't "dictating"
>   - if the language gets too complex, then other languages will
> appear which promote "easy for novice programmers to understand
> but also usable by expert programmers, unlike that baroque Python
> languages."

I just don't understand this line of reasoning.  Let's look at the
changes that have been introduced in Python in the past release or two:

- generators / iterators
- change in scheme for method searching for multiple inheritance
- metaclasses
- string methods
- etc.

Are you really claiming that conditional expressions are harder to
explain to novices than stuff like metaclasses?  

I think I was around 12 years old when I first encountered conditional
expressions in C.  I understood them right away.  There was other
stuff I didn't understand, but conditional expressions just weren't a
big deal.

Really, you're making too much of this.