[Python-Dev] Re: PEP-317

[Paul Prescod]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>>I've now read the PEP, and it simply fails to explain why implicit
>>>instantiation sucks so badly as to require all this pain.  The
>>>arguments of readability and consistency are pretty mild suckage IMO.
>>
>>My next question, then, is whether those arguments are strong
>>enough to justify, for example, recommending against implicit
>>instantiation in PEP 8, or changing the Tutorial's examples.
> 
> 
> I think not.  This is something that each project may decide for
> itself.  But I'm at most -0 on this.

The tutorial[1] implies but does not state that there are two syntaxes 
and implies but does not state that they are basically the same. Or one 
could get the implication that built-in exceptions use one syntax and 
user-defined ones use the other.

I think that consistency is important to pedagogy and therefore feel 
that it should consistently use one syntax or the other. I wish Guido 
would pronounce that one is better than the other so that the software 
in the library could also migrate towards being pedagogically helpful. 
But if not, at least the tutorial can be internally consistent.

  Paul Prescod

[1] http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/node10.html