What's the meaning of Dutch in "The Zen of Python"

Tim Peters tim.one at comcast.net
Wed May 19 16:21:37 EDT 2004


[Li Daobing]
>   Does anyone know what's the meaning of Dutch in "The Zen of Python"?
>   Thanks in advance

In context, "Dutch" means a person from the Netherlands, or one imbued with
Dutch culture (begging forgiveness for that abuse of the word).   I would
have said French, except that every French person I asked "how do you make a
shallow copy of a list?" failed to answer

    alist[:]

so I guess that's not obvious to them.  It must be obvious to the Dutch,
though, since it's obvious to Guido van Rossum (Python's creator, who is
Dutch), and a persistent rumor maintains that everyone who posts to
comp.lang.python is in fact also Dutch.  The French people I asked about
copying a list weren't Python users, which is even more proof (as if it
needed more).

Or, in other words, "obvious" is in part a learned, cultural judgment.
There's really nothing universally obvious about any computer language,
deluded proponents notwithstanding.  Nevertheless, most of Python is obvious
to the Dutch.  Others sometimes have to work a bit at *learning* the one
obvious way in Python, just as they have to work a bit at learning to
appreciate tulips, and Woody Woodpecker impersonations.





More information about the Python-list mailing list