PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[Guido van Rossum]

> What do you think of `truth(x)' for all the good reasons listed
> elsewhere in the thread?  You used truth yourself instead of Boolean
> above.

I didn't see any good reasons for calling it truth(). :-)

I am reminded of ABC, Python's predecessor.  Its designers were very
concerned about newbies being confused by traditional computer science
terms like "function", "procedure" and "variable", so they invented
all new terminology.  Functions ended up being called YIELDs,
procedures were HOW-TOs, statements became commands, and variables
became locations.

The main effect this had was to confuse the died-in-the-wool
programmers; it didn't make any difference for the newbies because
they had to learn the concepts anyway.  When you come in with a
blank mind it doesn't matter if a particular concept is called
"variable" or "waffle" -- you have to learn a new meaning for an
existing word either way, and the previous meaning you knew for the
word is barely relevant in the new context.

So, I am adamantly against using "truth" for the new type -- many
languages (all the way back to Algol-60 and Pascal) call it Boolean or
bool.  Given 'int', 'def' and 'dict', 'bool' feels more Pythonic than
'boolean'.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)