Boolean tests [was Re: Attack a sacred Python Cow]

[Russ P.]

On Jul 30, 8:24 pm, "Russ P." <Russ.Paie... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 30, 8:03 pm, Erik Max Francis <m... at alcyone.com> wrote:
>
> > Russ P. wrote:
> > > The reason I wrote that "it would be nice to be able to write"
>
> > > if x is not empty:
>
> > > is that it reads naturally. It was not an actual proposal, and the
> > > fact that you took it as such was *your* mistake.
> >         ...
> > > Now read carefully: I DID NOT CLAIM THAT THIS IS THE WAY TO DO IT! Let
> > > me repeat that for you: I DID NOT CLAIM THAT THIS IS THE WAY TO DO IT!
> > > Did you get that, idiot?
>
> > So people who can read words but not minds are idiots.  Go get 'em, tiger!
>
> I don't know if you can read minds, but you seem to have a lot of
> trouble reading words.
>
> Can you read "it would be nice to be able to write ..."? Can you
> understand what it means? Can you understand that it does *not* mean,
> "one *should* be able to write ..."?
>
> The really significant question here is why I waste my valuable time
> with pedants like you.

Folks, I'm sorry for being so harsh here. But this guy keeps insisting
that I dispayed a "fundamental lack of understanding" of the correct
usage of "is" in Python. If that were true, I would have gladly
admitted it and dropped the matter. But it is completely false. The
simple fact is that I fully understood how "is" works in Python from
the first time I read about it -- as I'm sure most others here did
too. It just gets my goat that someone would latch onto some whimsical
suggestion I wrote to try to prove otherwise.

He did not need to play that silly little game, and he could have
easily avoided my insults had he not played it.