Scheme style and Python style [was: Re: Typed Python?]

[François Pinard]

[Michele Simionato]

> Yes, indeed having iterators and generators built-in in the language
> (as well as an exception system) exhaust most of the use case for
> continuation so you don't really feel the need for them in Python in
> normal circumstances.

I recently worked on my little `pynits' tool (hoping to release it a
third time, as soon as I'm satisfied enough with the changes), and have
a need for continuations there.  The circumstances for that need may be
slightly unusual, but I would surely not qualify them as abnormal :-).

Suddenly backtracking out of a complex involvement for restarting in a
new direction, for the above project at least, requires a lot of state
resumption, and doing this cleanly in Python implies a rather strict and
burdening discipline about where and how the state information is kept.
While tractable, this is not as comfortable as I would have liked it...

Maybe I'll find better ways if I let the problem mature enough? :-)

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard