Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Aug 23)

[Anthony Baxter]

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 00:54:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> Anthony Baxter wrote:
> 
> > (Hell, this entire discussion is now
> > pretty much based on subjective or aesthetic judgements).

Just to backtrack on this a _little_ - I'm talking about the
block-before-def and pie-syntaxes here. There's still a bunch of
others forms that are _completely_ awful on technical grounds. I
really can't be bothered arguing over the "J2" vs "A1" syntaxes,
though.

> Excellent!  If that's true, it really has reached the stage
> where it's ready for the BDFL's pronouncement.  Having the
> slaves do all the hard work and having the BDFL only have
> to weigh the subjective and aesthetic issues is probably
> exactly how the process should work, and should still
> result in a Python that is a consistent and coherent whole. **

Yep. That's one of the nice things about the BDFL school of language
design - pointless bickering over syntax, which would otherwise not
end until the universe implodes, can be handpassed to Guido.

(In addition, of course, you also end up with a much better result
than you would if a committee designed it)