PEP0238 lament

[Robin Becker]

In article <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list at python.org>, Moshe Zadka
<moshez at zadka.site.co.il> writes
>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:24:22 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> 
>> I agree.  It's turning an otherwise fairly strongly (but dynamically)
>> typed language on its head.  If I want type-changing operations, I'll do
>> them explicitly.
>
>Be sure to tell math.cos that...it has been "silently" turning integers
>into floats for years.
...
coercions and the like are a separate issue. the cos of 1.0 , 1/1 and 1
are all the same so it makes some sense to allow a conversion. 

The 1/2 == 0 case is just as good if not better than the 1/2 == 0.5
case, it's probably slightly worse than the rational result case, but we
have many languages which treat integer division like python currently
so I would argue that it has some extra merit.

We hear many criticisms of basic on this list, but Dartmouth basic was
originally a teaching language.  When I taught basic, C didn't exist and
Fortran, Algol and the like were considered too hard for non-programmer
university students.

The leadership seems to want to python become more available to a lower
grade of student than first year undergraduates.

I think that is wrong, but I use python in a professional capacity. I
think languages succeed or fail because they work for programmers.
Division in computers is always discrete (unless we ever manage to get
quantum things working).
-- 
Robin Becker