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

[Stephen Horne]

On 08 Feb 2003 13:21:55 -0800, Paul Rubin
<phr-n2003b at NOSPAMnightsong.com> wrote:

>This vote should be on whether to have conditional expressions, rather
>than a "ternary operator".  In particular it should be open to
>expressions using keywords, n-way expressions, etc.  Also, a
>supermajority should not be required.  I'm not even convinced a simple
>majority should be required (list comprehensions never would have
>gotten one, and they are a good feature), but it's hard to call
>anything a "vote" if a minority can pass it.

I kind of agree with this - I think the results should be posted and
the decision left to our BDFL whatever the stats turn out to be.
Which, of course, it will be. But I don't think there should be an
inherent 'we've decided to put it off' clause - beyond our specific
preferences, we should avoid pushing Guido into any particular action.

For instance, purely hypothetically, if 10% vote for one particular
option, 9% for a second, and 81% for various other options with none
individually getting more than 8%, the 10% option would probably be
worth choosing rather than delaying everything for a year - and if all
the voters for the 10% winner had missed some fundamental problem,
then the second (or third or whatever) choice might still be better
than nothing.

The ability to make a decision in unclear cases, rather than endlessly
putting it off, is one of the advantages of individual judgement - and
a major one at that.

I somehow doubt that we'll get an absolutely clear winner. As long as
'something new' is more popular than 'keep the existing hacks',
perhaps the 'Bush jr.' scenario is sufficient (though thinking about
it like that, I suddenly have doubts).

-- 
steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk