What has PEP 285 done to us?

[Arthur Siegel]

 > I do not think the PEP *did* damage - it only revealed that >our
community has problems. I don't understand what >problems.

In my view, something about the exception to the rule
syndrome.

Guido has expressed some welcome self-awareness and
humility on a number of occasions by publicly admitting
frustration at his own inability to articulate the basis for
his design intuitions.

But then seems to go off the wall frustrated when he
opens things up for discussion based on those articulations
and finds that folks don't get it.

My contribution to the div operator discussion - and
I tried to make that clear - was "I have *no* opinion on
how a div operator should behave and understand myself
unqualified to discuss the issue in general terms. I am *not* a peer."

But - I felt very very strongly that the justifications
being articulated did not hold water.  Because the justifications
were largely about "non-programmers*, *newbies* , etc and
etc and pointed to evidence from specific projects about
which I happened to have been quite familiar, the issue was *totally*
outside the realm of the technical, I had the basis to consider myself a
peer in that portion of the discussions and was *convinced* the evidence
cited did provide the basis to draw the conclusions that were being drawn.
So now a discussion of "/" is becoming in my mind an insult to scientific
thinking.

I still have *no* objection to the div operator decision and
am at the same time more convinced than ever that a major articulated basis
for it does not hold water.

Where my own sensibilities happen to explode is when I perceive a good
portion of the community defending Guido's
position when it is based on thin evidence, is non-technical, and represents
no more than one guy's take based on the amount of attention he happens to
have been able to give the matter, as they do when it is based on an
articulated position on technical matters - where I would agree the burden
of proof most definitely shifts.

And when I find there was a Zen masters' wand at our disposal all along.  I
certainly cannot discern *any* basis to understand when we are allowed to
resort to it, and when not.

So I grow to distrust not so much Guido, as the community.

And at this point will be happy enough just to read the release notes.

Art