PEP0238 lament

[Myles]

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:05:34 -0500, <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote:
> 
> >> 1/2 == 0.5:
> >>    Perl -- untyped, thus irrelevent
> >>    LISP -- academic language only
> >>    Pascal -- the Ada folks thought it was wrong
> >>    Modula 2+ -- Minority languages
> >>    JavaScript -- dumbed down language
> >> 1/2 == 0:
> >>    Visual BASIC -- most used language 3 yrs running
> >>    C -- what need I say?
> >>    C++ -- ditto
> >>    Java -- ditto
> >>    Ada -- intentionally changed the Pascal practice
> >>    VBA -- most used non-programmer language
[snippery snip]
> VB is based on BASIC, which has a variable history but which in the
> early days generally did 1/2 -> 0.5, and generally *changed* it later
> on.

Ermm, fact correction :
not on the VB and VBA I have available to me.

VB (admittedly v.4):
    x = 1 \ 2
    MsgBox (x)
gives 0.5

VBA (in Excel 97):
    Worksheets("Sheet1").Activate
    Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("B5").Activate
    ActiveCell = 1 / 2
gives 0.5

A quick peek through the helpfiles for both reveals that integer
division for the "most used language 3 yrs running" and for the "most
used non-programmer language" actually uses a different operator "\" for
integer division, in a similar manner to the proposal for Python ! :-)

We now return viewers to the main argument : 
"Are the benefits worth breaking backward compatibility, and will the
change process in place be sufficient to manage this ?"

Regards, Myles.