Python's "only one way to do it" philosophy isn't good?

[Antoon Pardon]

On 2007-06-11, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>
> "Antoon Pardon" <apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote in message 
> news:slrnf6q9ah.cf9.apardon at rcpc42.vub.ac.be...
>| On 2007-06-09, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>| > For him to imply that Python is anti-flexibility is wrong.  Very 
> wrong..
>| > He should look in a mirror.  See below.
>|
>| My impression is that python supporters often enough show
>| some anti-flexibility attitude.
>
> More so than supporters of most other languages, in particular Scheme?

Well to my knowledge (which could be vastly improved), scheme doesn't
have some Zen-rules that include something like this.

I tried to google for similar remarks in relation to scheme but I
got no results. Maybe your google skills are better.

> Here's the situation.  Python is making inroads at MIT, Scheme home turf. 
> The co-developer of Scheme, while writing about some other subject, tosses 
> in an off-the-wall slam against Python.  Someone asks what we here think. 
> I think that the comment is a crock and the slam better directed, for 
> instance, at Scheme itself.  Hence 'he should look in a mirror'.
>
>| Yes science is different. The difference is the following. Should
>| science only know the Newtonian vectoral mechanics and someone
>| would come up with the Lagrangian approach, nobody would protest
>| against this new approach by remarking that there should only be
>| one obvious approach,
>
> The history of science is a history of innovation and resistance to 
> innovation.  Do you have information that the introduction of the 
> Lagrangian approach was exceptional?  Do you really think that no college 
> student has ever groused about having to learn another approach that is 
> only equivalent to what he already knows?

Yes the history of science is a history of innovation and resistance.
But the resistance to my knowledge has never used the argument that
there should (preferably) be only one obvious way to do things.

The student example is IMO not appropiate. There is a difference between
prefering not having to learn something yourself and argueing something
shouldn't be available in general.

>| Yet these kind of remarks are made often enough when someone suggest a
>| change to python.
>
> So?  Tim wrote 'There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way 
> to do it'.  The primary clause is that there should at least one.  The 
> secondary clause is that once there is a good and obvious way to do 
> something, we take a hard look before adding another.  As it is, there are 
> already multiple ways to do many things.  And there are probably at least 
> 10 suggested innovations for everyone accepted.

Yes I know that. But that doesn't stop a lot of python supporters in this news
group to come with a variation that suggests once there is an obvious way to do
something in python, there really is no need any more to look at ways
that do it differently. And if my memory doesn't betray me, corrections
from others to such variations are a rather recent occurence.

-- 
Antoon Pardon