Why tuples use parentheses ()'s instead of something else like <>'s?

[Roy Smith]

"John Roth" <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> wrote:
> > If Python had originally been invented in a unicode world, I suppose we
> > wouldn't have this problem.  We'd just be using guillemots for tuples
> > (and have keyboards which made it easy to type them).
> 
> I suppose the forces of darkness will forever keep Python from
> requiring utf-8 as the source encoding. If I didn't make a fetish
> of trying to see the good in everybody's position, I could really
> work up a dislike of the notion that you should be able to use
> any old text editor for Python source.

You can't use "any old text editor" for Python source.  You can only use 
a hardware/software combination which supports the required character 
set (which AFAICT means ASCII, including *both* cases of the alphabet).  
You would probably find it difficult to enter Python code on a 029 
keypunch, or an ASR-33, or even an IBM-3270.  

Granted, those are all dinosaurs these days, but 30 years ago, they 
represented the norm.  At that time, C was just hitting the streets, and 
it was a pain to edit on many systems because it used weird characters 
like { and }, which weren't in EBCDIC, or RAD-50, or SIXBIT, or whatever 
character set your system used.  ASCII was supposed to solve that 
nonsense once and for all, except of course for the minor problem that 
it didn't let most people in the world spell their names properly (if at 
all).

In any case, it's a good thing that Python can be edited with "any old 
text editor", because that lowers the price of entry.  I like emacs, the 
next guy likes vi, or vim, or notepad, or whatever.  Nothing is keeping 
folks who like IDEs from inventing and using them, but I would have been 
a lot less likely to experiment with Python the first time if it meant 
getting one of them going just so I could run "Hello, world".

With google as my witness, I predict that in 30 years from now, ASCII 
will be as much a dinosaur as a keypunch is today, and our children and 
grandchildren will both wonder how their ancestors ever managed to write 
programs without guillemots and be annoyed that they actually have to 
type on a keyboard to make the computer understand them.