Range Operation pre-PEP

[Alex Martelli]

"Douglas Alan" <nessus at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:lc1ypymbjo.fsf at gaffa.mit.edu...
    ...
> (Besides, I never lobbied for Python to include macros.  I only stated
> that it would be a better language if it had them.  But sometimes
> better is worse.)

Didn't you write "Python should have procedural macros like Lisp."
(on 2001-04-16 14:20:05 PST -- google doesn't make it easy to give
other and more precise message identification)?

"Lobbying" no doubt connotes much more and better organized effort
than just posting netnews messages.  But you didn't just state that
Python would be a better language if it had macros: you did write it
*SHOULD* have them (nor did I ever read anything from you to the
tone of "sorry, I was wrong, it SHOULDN'T have them" -- lots that
might be interpreted as attempts at backing off without actually
doing so, but never any apology or retraction).


Just to clarify by analogy and example: I opine, for example, that
Python would be a (marginally) better language if it didn't have
`expression` as a shorthand for repr(expression) -- it's one extra
(little) piece of syntactic baggage which IMHO is not "carrying
its weight".  But from this opinion does not follow that Python
*shouldn't* have `expression` -- that would be quite a stronger
assertion (personally, there is exactly one construct in Python
today of which I feel I could assert Python "shouldn't have it").


Alex