PEP0238 lament

[Rainy]

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:01:08 -0500, Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com <Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com> wrote:
> 
> If I was told that experinced programmers might 
> appreciate this change for any possible reason - 
> I'd be quiet as a mouse.

I don't think they will..

> 
> Since I remain convinced that the single most important
> factor for Python's acceptance as an educational language is
> the growth of its  acceptance as a professional language.

First of all, it's really ugly. It's the ugliest thing in python for a newbie,
imho. Yes, 1/2 is 0. You have to type 1.0/2 to get 0.5. No, there is no good
reason for that, just memorize it. Ugh.

If it was just a matter of that, it wouldn't be enough for a change (non-
backwards-compatible one). But, the problem is that people will have strange
bugs because of this and spend hours upon hours trying to figure out what's
wrong. Python may be around during next 10-20 years and userbase may grow
a thousandfold, and having this ugliness on board for all this time is a
big problem.

It's arguable whether the problem is serious enough to break old code, but it's
obvious (to me, anyway) that there *is* a rather big problem here.

-- 
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