terminological obscurity

[Donn Cave]

In article <7u94b0hi6mgfbdipirk03dksovmkd6886u at 4ax.com>,
 Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.com> wrote:

> Sorry folks, the dunamics here really interest me. It is simply group
> dynamics in the circumstances of a strong individual leader. I don't
> mean to be in finger pointing, or hysterics mode.
> 
> But backing up, and re-reading the python-dev thread from which this
> all starts, I think there is one other factor.  
> 
> Simply that the distinction being drawn by Guido was  - I'm thinking -
> formed prior to new style classes, and attendent changes to the
> language. And that it was more meaningful once, than it is now is.
> 
> Certainly a programming language like Python is tightly  woven and it
> should be no real surprise that changes to the language as fundamental
> as occurred since 1.5.2 - not directly related to lists or tuples -
> would impact the conceptualization and language with which might most
> appropriate in describing these structures.

That's reasonable, but can you explain your hypothesis?
Like, what is it about the current class/type structure
that has anything to do with this?  I don't see it.

As far as the group dynamics & Guido go, you can probably
forget that.  There are all kinds of things going on, and
that could play a role, but only a weak one.  People have
a lot of strong opinions about programming languages, and
if people here seem to find it easy to agree with Guido,
the simplest explanation is that they choose to use Python
and hang out on comp.lang.python because they like it.  As
long as he keeps singing basically the same tune, they'll
like what they hear.  If he were to take off in some really
different direction - like imagine he announces that Python 3
will have strong static typing - the majority would be
outraged and the rest would be the minority who always did
wish that were the case.

In fact I think this has something to do with the present
issue - the notion of a homogeneous list is very familiar
to users of statically typed languages, where it means exactly
what it wasn't supposed to mean here.  To a defender of the
faith, them's fightin' words, regardless of who said it.

   Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu