Proposed PEP for a Conditional Expression

[Gareth McCaughan]

Alex Martelli wrote:

> Sure!  But the mistake in the PEP is putting forward the "what's
> wrong with just satisfying people" rhetorical question as an
> argument FOR a proposed feature.  It's a grossly invalid argument
> and IMHO it should be either removed from the PEP, or clearly
> marked as such -- invalid as an argument.

It's not an invalid argument, just a weak one. All else
being equal, the fact that even one user wants a feature
is an argument in its favour. If it's true that many
users want conditional expressions, then that's an
argument for providing them. It's not close to being a
conclusive argument, of course.

> The need to keep the language small and simple is an argument
> against _every_ feature (new and old: I just love it when
> Python is able to shed old features that don't fully pull
> their weight, although that's always harder to do than "not
> adding new ones", because of backwards compatibility issues).

Right. And *that* should probably be in the PEP as an
argument against. Much better than taking out the "lots
of people want it" argument, provided it's true that
lots of people do want it.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc