print longs

[David Ascher]

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Charles G Waldman wrote:

> David Ascher writes:
>  >
>  > So you want sqrt(-1) to always succeed?  Brr..
> 
> Why would this be such a terrible thing?  I'm not sure I see the
> grounds for your shivering.

Most of the folks I teach Python to have never heard of complex numbers,
and they're not especially in a rush to learn about them.  They'd *have
to* if they ever used sqrt and had some weird complex numbers propagate
through their code (as a result of a missed bug).

> I'm of the camp that just hates the fact that 1/2 != 1./2. (which

Absolutely.  That, IMHO, is a different problem.  Complex numbers are
different because they are so foreign to most users of Python, and having
them spring out of nowhere would raise lots of eyebrows.  I can just
imagine Guido and his 12-year olds...

BTW, is "0" a special kind of number?  How about "0.0"? <5.005 wink>

>  > BTW, it's "complices" (from the French for 'accomplice').  
> 
> Hmm, I spent 7 years in the Math Dept. at MIT and never once heard
> that word.  Indices, matrices and hyperbolae, sure, but never anything
> but "the complexes" when referring to that lovely
> algebraically-complete number field obtained by adjoining a formal
> square root of -1 to the reals.  Maybe if I'd been up the river at
> Harvard instead of MIT I would have learned the proper Latin
> formation....

Sigh.  T'was a joke.

(I'll tell you my other MIT/Harvard joke at IPC8 if you're there).

went-to-neither-ly' yrs, david