terminological obscurity

[Donn Cave]

Quoth Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.com>:
| On Tue, 25 May 2004 09:03:29 -0700, Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu>
| wrote:
..
| You fundamentally miss my point.
|
| What you are saying is clear enough. You are also saying that this is
| what Guido meant, when he said something different.  And leaving as
| anomolous why Guido didn't say what he meant himself.

Well, to be honest, what Guido said or meant isn't the critical thing
for me.  But this isn't a choice between two reasonable alternatives.
He did distinguish between the ideal applications for tuples and lists,
describing them in terms that allow for one sensible interpretation,
and one completely, utterly absurd interpretation.

Maybe he could have said it better, seeing as some people read it and
don't get the sensible interpretation right away.  So they say `hey,
what's up with this weird idea about lists vs. tuples?'  For most,
this seems to be a solvable problem.  I don't know if everyone is
convinced of the merits of the argument, but they at least roughly
understand it.  You, however, start from the observation that Guido
said something bafflingly stupid, and then proceed to cling to that
interpretation when everyone else has dismissed it.  Why?  Don't
answer that, I don't care.  Just forget about Guido for a while, OK?
If you are constructing a conceptually homogeneous sequence, use a
list.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com