[Python-Dev] Proposing an alternative to PEP 410

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Simon Cross
<hodgestar+pythondev at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 6:12 PM, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:
>> It's probably neutral.  But I do have one question: can you foresee the
>> scientific community moving to a finer resolution than nanoseconds in our
>> lifetimes?
>
> I think we're already there. Even just in radio astronomy new arrays
> like ALMA which operate a terahertz frequencies are looking at
> picosecond or possibly femtosecond timing accuracy (ALMA operates at
> ~1000 times higher frequency than MeerKAT so they need ~1000 times
> more accurate timing).
>
> E.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/29/alma-radio-telescope-chile-astronomy

None of that bears any relation on the precision of the timers
available in the OS through Python's time and os APIs.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)