Why and how "there is only one way to do something"?

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Thu Dec 15 08:32:07 EST 2005


bonono at gmail.com wrote:
[...]
> It is perfectly ok to define coding policy within an organisation, for
> a project that have more than one developer and things like that. But
> if the language allows more than one way to do it, people would try if
> that is what they want and they can.
> 
> I would say that if "only one way to do it" is the intend, make it into
> the language and any other way is simply error. Say if ternary operator
> is not the "preferred way", don't have it in the language. If someone
> find a way to work around it, change that part of the language to break
> their code.
> 
This would have the unfortunate side effect of only allowing changes to 
Python that allowed users to do things which are currently impossible.

Since Python is Turing-complete, this would effectively inhibit all 
further changes to the language.

Would you, say, remove "for" loops because they could be written as 
"while" loops. Don't forget the word "obvious" that appears in that 
catchphrase ...

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
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