Python as Guido Intended

[Ben Finney]

Antoon Pardon <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:
> On 2005-11-30, Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote:
> > You'd be wrong. "Can" denotes a possibility, not a certainty.
> 
> You didn't write:
>   Removing things can make a language more powerfull.
>   
> You wrote:
>   You can make a language more powerfull by removing things.
> 
> In the first case "can" describes a possible outcome of removing
> things.
> 
> In the second case "can" describes that this is a decision you are
> allowed and able to make. Not the possibility of the outcomes should
> you make the decision. 

That's a distinction that exists. I don't see how it's significant
here.

Do you believe that these two statements are contradictory?

    "You can make X more powerful by removing things."
    "You can make X less powerful by removing things."

How about these two, do you think they're contradictory?

    "You can make X more powerful by removing things."
    "You can make X more powerful by adding things."

In fact, neither of those pairs are contradictory. All of them can be
truthful about the same X simultaneously.

> What your sentence states is that you can make this decision and
> that if you do so, removing things will accomplish this goal

No. The statement says nothing about *which* things need to be removed
to meet the goal. It doesn't say that removing *any* thing from the
language will make it more powerful.

I think this is an understandably subtle linguistic point for someone
who doesn't have English as a first language; it's ambiguous enough
that even native speakers could twist it to read more that it actually
says.

Now that you understand what Mike was trying to say, and Mike has
clarified what his statement meant, can we move on to another
argument?

> I just want to add that I'm not interrested in whether your
> interpretation is the right one or mine. I understand now what you
> meant and that is enough for meu. The above should be considered as
> an explanation of how understood, not as a correction of how yuo
> should have wrote it.

An object lesson in taking programmers at their word :-)

-- 
 \      "I went to San Francisco. I found someone's heart."  -- Steven |
  `\                                                            Wright |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney