Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

[Aahz]

In article <mailman.1429.1112794393.1799.python-list at python.org>,
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard  <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>[Aahz]
>> [François]
>>>
>>>Many of us are using Python today, week after week, year long.  So
>>>let's be pragmatic.  Python is what it became and now is.  Let's not
>>>define it as a memory from the past nor as a futuristic dream.
>>
>> You're free to continue using 1.5.2.  [...]
>
>Sure, of course.  Yet, our friendly argument is sliding away from was it
>originally was.  The point was about not asserting in this forum that
>Python "has only one way to do it", because this is not true anymore.
>
>The principle has been, it may be back in some distant future, but now
>it is not.

You're conflating two different things:

* Whether Python currently has only one way to do things

* Whether Python has a design goal of only one way to do things

I'll agree that Python currently has many examples of more than one way
to do things (and even Python 3.0 won't remove every example, because
anything more complicated than a Turing Machine has more than one way to
do things).  But I won't agree that Only One Way has been abandoned as a
design principle.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable
classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code -- 
not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death."  --GvR