PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Duncan Booth]

Anton Vredegoor <anton.vredegoor at gmail.com> wrote:

> Whatever you make of my position I would appreciate if you'd not 
> directly conclude that I'm just being arrogant or haven't thought
> about the matter if I am of a different opinion than you.

Sorry, I do apologise if that came across as a personal attack on you. It 
certainly wasn't intended as such.

I was writing about the community as a whole: I think it would be arrogant 
if the Python community was to decide not to support non-ascii identifiers 
purely because the active community of experienced users doesn't want them 
used in OSS software. OTOH, it may just be my own arrogance thinking such a 
thing.

> 
>> Yes, any sensible widespread project is going to mandate a particular
>> language for variable names and comments, but I see no reason at all
>> why they all have to use English.
> 
> Well I clearly do see a reason why it would be in their very best 
> interest to immediately start to use English and to interact with the 
> main Python community.

I think the 'main Python community' is probably a very small subset of all 
Python developers. To be honest I expect that only a tiny percentage of 
OLPC users will ever do any programming, and a miniscule fraction of those 
will go beyond simple scripts (but I'd love to be proved wrong and in a few 
years be facing 50 million new Python programmers). Most of the programming 
which is likely to happen on these devices is not going to require input 
from the wider community.

> 
>> [*] BTW, I see OLPC Nepal is looking for volunteer Python programmers
>> this Summer: if anyone fancies spending 6+ weeks in Nepal this Summer
>> for no pay, see
>> http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@laptop.org/msg04109.html 
> 
> Thanks. I'll think about it. The main problem I see for my
> participation is that I have absolutely *no* personal funds to
> contribute to this project, not even to pay for my trip to that
> country or to pay my rent while I'm abroad.
> 
I think accomodation was included for the first 4 volunteers, the tricky 
bit would be the air fare, I've no idea how much but I suspect flights to 
Nepal aren't cheap.