sorting list of complex numbers

[Tim Golden]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:39:27 -0800, Paul Rubin wrote:
> 
>> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:
>>>>> Do your tuple destructuring in the first statement in your body and
>>>>> nothing will break.
>> Why get rid of a useful feature that unclutters code?
> 
> Unfortunately, the people who find it useful are a minority. Most people 
> don't care for it, and the Python dev team decided that the code they 
> most wanted to unclutter was their own CPython implementation.
> 
> Personally, I'm with you on this one: it's a small step backwards. But 
> only a *small* step. Whether it is outweighed by the steps forward, well, 
> time will tell.

I must admit I grumbled a bit when I saw it happening, but
held back both because you've got to take the rough with
the smooth when taking advantage of other people's work
on your behalf; and because the developer in question
(Brett C, if memory serves) indicated that to keep it in
would make other needed changes difficult to manage. 

So it wasn't just gratuitous breakage. It's tempting to
say that some sort of survey could have been taken to
see who might be affected, but frankly the debates on
these things on python-dev alone can run forever; imagine
what it would be like on python-list. (Or cast your mind
back, if you will, to the three-part-conditional debate :) )

TJG