Python3k extended grammar

[Tres Seaver]

In article <Pine.GSO.4.10.10005201852090.5989-100000 at sundial>,
Moshe Zadka  <moshez at math.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 May 2000, Thomas Malik wrote:
>
>> 1. case insensitivity sounds like complete nonsense to me. Who needs it,
>> actually ?
>
>The "E" in CP4E, according to quite a few usability studies.

*Sigh* Citations please, for anything other than Randy Pausch's roadshow.
His "workaround" for Alice is actually the Right Thing (TM):  address the
issue in tools designed for novices, rather than deforming the language.

>> 2. promoting integer divisions to float sounds quite stupid to me:
>> (x/y) * y + x % y == x should always hold true in any sane language
>
>Ummmm....
>
>1/2 == 0
>
>Seems sane to you? Where were you when they taught about fractions in math
>class? The only thing which looks sane to me is 1/2 is 1/2. And 1/3. And
>367/573. 

This change will break *huge* volumes of code, in the name of the "E" in
CP4E.  Again, it seems primarily motivated by the Alice project's creator,
and would be better addressed in tools than the language.

After all, elementary maths *don't* teach that "1/3" is 0.33333333 (or
whatever 754 gives as the roundoff) -- floating point representations of
rational numbers are subject to as many (or more!) gotchas as integer
math, which is at least comprehensible to anybody who knows the terms
"quotient" and "remainder").

Tres.
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Tres Seaver        tseaver at digicool.com     http://www.zope.org
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