Language change and code breaks

[phil hunt]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:49:57 -0600, Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
>> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at digicool.com]
>> 
>> > I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
>> > expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
>> > non-programmers.
>> 
>> IMO there are two non-truths in this statement.
>> 
>> (1) The expressivity of the language is not crippled.
>> 
>> (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
>>     group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
>>     arbitrary rule than non-programmers).
>
>TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
>hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
>iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
>stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
>begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.

Rubbish. The only thing you can't do is give them the same name, eg:

message = Message()

but this is bad practise anyway, IMO.



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