[Python-Dev] PEP 326 (quick location possibility)

[Andrew Koenig]

> >     global_minimum = made_up_value_presumed_to_be_unreachably_large
> >     while mote_to_look_at:
> >         do a ton of computation, yielding a candidate
> >         if score(candidate) < global_minimum:
> >             global_minimum = score(candidate)
> >             do a ton of stuff to prune the search based
> >                 on the new (so far) local minimum
> >     return global_minimum

> I'm curious: why you didn't use None as the initial value or use some
> other hack to avoid initializing with a specific number?

Perhaps None is unreachably small, rather than unreachably large?