Language change and code breaks

[Dirck Blaskey]

"Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:3B4E53DD.A319FDD9 at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz...
> Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> >
> > It's a problem with expectations and the law of least astonishment.
> > Which audience would you rather astonish, and how much?
>
> Depends on what you understand "the problem" to
> be. To me, it's the fact that I have to write
> something ludicrously convoluted just to tell
> Python what sort of division I want to do.
> This has nothing to do with astonishment.

The law of least astonishment:
A software program should always respond to
the user in the way that astonishes him the least.

It sounds like you find Python's integer division 'astonishing',
and yet I would be 'astonished' if it did anything else.

Therein lies the conundrum.