General question about Python design goals

[Peter Hansen]

Christoph Zwerschke wrote:
> But it just led me to the general question: Which significance actually 
> have design features such as orthogonality for Python?

Probably very little.  Python has not so much been designed as evolved. 
  Plus it's a fairly mature language (over 14 years old), and I think in 
such a case that elements of design tend to be obscured by the many 
changes layered on top.  (For example, I hardly recognize the C++ that I 
learned in the language that struggles on today.)

While the goal of orthogonality may factor into some people's reasons 
for implementing certain changes, it's not (apparently) a primary 
motivation for many of the ones doing work on the Python core.  If more 
people with such motivations had been working on the core, it's likely 
Python would have more of these sorts of "gaps" filled in.

(The corollary, of course, is that there would be other gaps, and they 
would be more practical ones, so other people would probably be 
suggesting things like "wouldn't it be good if Python had a Unicode type 
instead of all these little-used functions that make the language nice 
and orthogonal but aren't really necessary". ;-) )

-Peter