[Python-Dev] Re: __metaclass__ and __author__ are already decorators

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sun Aug 22 23:10:35 CEST 2004


> I'm sorry Guido if I was out of line.  I'm just a Python user (a
> strong proponent of the language), and have not seen the definition
> of 'pythonic' published anywhere, so I assumed that it was open to
> interpretation, as I've seen others make assertions that feature x
> or y "is pythonic".
> 
> Is there a sanctioned definition for that term?

No, and that's intentionally so, because beauty is not absolute or
quantifyable (even if there are extreme cases where we can all agree).

All uses of pythonic should be explicitly qualified by "IMO" or
something equivalent.  And you can't assume that everybody
automatically assumes this!

Your recent posts seemed out of line to me only because you were being
very argumentative and at the same time exposed serious
misunderstanding (*).  That's usually a clue to back off...  High
frequency posters are only okay if their posts have a high information
content.

(*) Which you acknowledged, but in messages showing more poor form by
containing many dozens of lines of quoted material followed by a
single "I see".

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


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