Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 08:57:34 -0800, Don Geddis wrote:

> Why would division on integers mean something different than division on
> (floating point) doubles?

Because C did it this way and many languages are copying its conventions.
And C did it because it used / for integer division before it had floating
point types.

I was responding to "Something that annoys me about many statically-typed
languages is the insistence that arithmetic operations should return the
same type as the operands.  2 / 4 is 1/2, not 0."

While it is true that many statically typed languages do that, it's not
a consequence of static typing (others don't). The only fault of static
typing here is that it makes this choice relatively harmless, compared to
dynamically typed languages where it's a serious problem if this choice
is made.

I was going to respond "making 2/4 equal to 0 is unrelated to static or
dynamic typing", but it *is* related, only in a subtle way.

-- 
   __("<         Marcin Kowalczyk
   \__/       qrczak at knm.org.pl
    ^^     http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/