The Funniest thing about PEP 285

[Michael Chermside]

The funniest thing about PEP 285 is this:

    I thought it was an elaborate April Fools joke.

After all, I reasoned, having a bool type might be a good idea, but it's 
the sort of thing that is raised over and over again, and has (up until 
now) been rejected just as often.

There were even a few "give-aways" -- things which were just a little 
bit too incredible to believe. For instance, Guido had made it quite 
clear that 2.3 was to be a "no new syntax" release, so announcing it 
would appear in 2.3 couldn't be true. And Tim's claim that 
operator.truth should return an int instead of a bool (when it's NAMED 
"truth"!) seemd a bit beyond the credible.

Considering the date, I decided it was an elaborate (and REALLY WELL 
DONE) April Fool's Day joke.

Of course, if such a joke appeared in Slashdot (anyone remember 
"Parrot"?) or most other forums, there would be a horde of people 
posting to say "This is just an April Fool's joke.", but I figured that 
the Python community had (appropriately) a better developed sense of 
humor, and knew better than to spoil the joke by revealing it.

In the end, I think the joke was on me.

<grin>

-- Michael Chermside


PS: The most AMAZING thing about PEP 285 is this:

Despite my thinking that it was a joke, I completely support the 
proposal. In fact, I think that the version Guido declared as accepted 
is the best possible solution with regard to every issue raised during 
the discussion. And, ammusingly, I think of that more as a validation of 
MY language design skills than of Guido's.