conditional expressions (RE: Loop-and-a-half (Re: Curious assignment behaviour))

[Donn Cave]

Quoth andy47 at halfcooked.com (Andy Todd):
...
| That is my take as well. Never liked C's ternary operator, never used it. 
| Replicating it in Python adds nothing to the language, it does not make 
| code cleaner or more efficient and it certainly doesn't make it easier to 
| understand.
|
| Not that my vote counts but minus about 20 from me.

Right, I think it's official that your (our) vote doesn't count, but
we do count as users, and like anything else, if we just take what
we're handed, we get what we deserve.

I don't know how I'm going to feel about all this, down the road, but
there's a chance I won't be on board, in the sense that I will not be
interested in upgrading.  That's the vote I get.

It won't mean much if it's just me.  I don't think it would take all
that many, though, to make a difference.  I don't expect GvR et al. to
undo all the changes they have been checking in, or even to necessarily
take notice of whether they're losing some old timers - from the sound
of it, I'd expect more like "good riddance!"  But the big question for
those of us who bail out is going to be, I think, whether we continue
to invest in our old version of Python, or put Python development in
legacy mode and start looking for a more attractive option.

Right now, that doesn't sound all that wonderful - far too radical,
for the minor problem at hand, maybe.  But when the time comes,
for each of us, it will be a lot easier for all of us if we have
collectively already settled a "classic Python" version.  Which
one I don't know, 2.1, 2.0, even 1.5.2.  If there's a solid,
permanent constituency for that one specific version, then even
outside that world, maybe a few people who write Python software
will make a point to bear in mind what will work there.  If that
happens, operating system vendors and others who can't support a
constantly changing Python might be attracted.  If it worked, it
could be step forward for Python.

The hard part is that we have to make up our minds to do this.  If
everyone falls off separately, we'll be scattered all over, because
it's hard to downgrade.  Everyone has to decide for themselves, but
at any rate, please, please don't upgrade to 2.2 if you have doubts.
Don't feel that you have to jump off while you still like what you're
getting, but don't jump off after having upgraded to a version you
don't really like!

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu