PEP 285: Adding a bool type

[Erik Max Francis]

Ralph Corderoy wrote:

> Terry Reedy wrote:
>
> > C. Anyone learning Python has some idea of truth and truth values.
> > But I am sure there are some with no idea of what 'bool' means and
> > only a vague idea about 'Boolean'.  Better formalizing Python truth
> > values should make them even easier to learn; why not call them what
> > they are?
> 
> That's an excellent point, as are the others you make.  My Mum would
> understand true but not bool or Boolean.

I'm not really sure how beneficial this would be.  In the real world,
not everything about a programming language -- even a low-overhead
language like Python -- can be instantly intuited by non-programmers. 
After some elementary level they're going to have to start reading. 
That bool (or boolean) is a Boolean type is not a hard concept to get
across, and I don't see how calling it "truth" is really all that much
more helpful.

It's far better, in my opinion, to give it a standard name from computer
science (bool or boolean) and let new programmers take the tiny little
steps (in this case) to add a new word to their vocabulary -- a word
that will help them in future explorations of programming and computer
science, no less.

Excessive attempts to make terms more approachable can lead to disaster
in the degenerate case, resulting in just a new form of terminology that
now nobody understands.

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 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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