What has PEP 285 done to us?

[Laura Creighton]

> In article <3CB2CB16.8080103 at geneva-link.ch>, Boris Borcic wrote:
> [snip]
> >(b) Laura made a lengthy point, overlooking the improvable while clear 
> >to the language designer's POV, that it very much boiled down to : "I've 
> >stacked my didactics of truth values in Python on the name of None, and 
> >the PEP makes me feel I've been telling lies".
> 
> That's not how I saw it. The main point I extracted was: Until now,
> the Pythonic "truth values" have been "something" and "nothing" (i.e.
> the empty list, zero, None, etc.) With the bool type this is still
> true, but we get a type which will give newbies the impression that it
> isn't.
> 
> >python >>> filter(lambda W : W not in "ILLITERATE","BULLSHIT")
> 
> Hm. What programming language is this supposed to be?
> 
> --
> Magnus Lie Hetland                                  The Anygui Project
> http://hetland.org                                  http://anygui.org
> 

Magnus understood me very well.  I only want to add is that the 
something-nothing is the real empirical truth of Nature, and all rest
is formalism.  Thus, if your teaching job is to train for realism
and to reject empty formalism (learning when formalism is empty and when 
it is worthwhile is exactly what I am teaching and this is hard, hard,
hard, hard, hard) then your job just got harder.  

In contrast --

Boris' phrasing indicates that I was 'trying to make a point' as if
this was some sort of ego-driven competition between myself and Guido
with some sort of pay-off in terms of whether the PEP passes, or
whether more big names on comp.lang.python come out in favour of me
than Guido or some other piece of nonsense.  I did not want this.
Boris has revealed a flaw in our process, because that he took it that
way means that the PEP process is being perceived as an ego-game.

This _really_ stinks, people.  I trusted Guido to be able to take off his
'I am an implementor and I just implemented a cool new feature' hat
and put on his 'I am a langauge designer, and I am now looking at the
language implications' hat.  This trust we must have in Guido or else
he will not be able to launch his own new features into Python.  This
is the faith we must have or else we think that we ONLY GOT LUCKY
in that Python is great.  

Stop worshipping or demonising the man.  Only in bad American movies
do the leaders of the military want blind discipline and worship.
Leadership is hard, and way more fascinating and creative than that.
But this list is not the place to discuss this, either.

Laura Creighton