[Python-Dev] [slighly OT] Native speakers and hurting brains

[Greg Ewing]

Boris Borcic wrote:

> sum() *is* exactly an attractive nuisance by *appearing* to be an obvious way of 
> chaining strings in a list (without actually being one).

But at least it fails immediately, prompting you to
look in another direction.

> I admit that there is a step of arguable interpretation from these recorded 
> facts to my diagnostic, but the latter is compatible with the facts. Your 
> version otoh looks more robust in the role of eg creation myth.

I suppose you could call that a linguistic matter, but
I don't think it's exclusively a *native* one. I suspect
that only someone with a programmer's warped mind would
make the leap from "sum" to "string concatenation" --
whether they were a native English speaker or not.

Also I don't see that my version of events is inconsistent
with the messages you quoted either -- at least not so much
as to be relegated to a myth!

--
Greg