float / double support in Python?

[Brian Quinlan]

> Fine.  Remain provincial.  I am getting sick of talking to Python
> developers about efficiency, conversion, and high-to-low-level
> Multilanguage transition issues.  It's clear enough what the 
> dominant Python culture is.

Brandon, in a previous point I pointed out what the current Python
development priorities were (i.e. XML, i18n, financial numerics,
date/time handling). Are you really arguing that those are less
important, to most developers, than having a single-precision numeric
type? 

Also, I could argue that C++ is a provincial language because:
- it doesn't have a fixed-point type
- it doesn't have a data type directly supporting the registers in my 
  MMU
- it doesn't have an unbounded integer type
- it doesn't have a complex number type

> If Python doesn't broaden its use cases, it doesn't gain mainstream
> acceptance and the language dies, beaten out by things such as Java 
> and C#.

In a previous post, you stated:

"You think we should all use 64-bit integers because some machines do it
natively, and others can do it with an emulation library?  You think we
should all use 2-byte wide chars because the Japanese need them?"

I'll point out that neither C# nor Java have a 1-byte string type. Also,
I recall reading somewhere that Java may be moving towards an unbounded
integer system. So are Java and C# doomed to provincialism because of
this (like Python is)?

> What I'm realizing is that although Python may be the right language 
> for the novice user AI scripting tasks I originally envisioned, it 
> not an ideal language for high level 3D graphics coding.  I think 
> I'll begin a search for something better and see what my options are.

Good idea.

Cheers,
Brian