New Python 3.0 string formatting - really necessary?

[Roy Smith]

In article 
<b58f588a-e8db-41df-a488-f7df62d56a78 at w39g2000prb.googlegroups.com>,
 walterbyrd <walterbyrd at iname.com> wrote:

> On Dec 19, 10:25 am, Michael Torrie <torr... at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Personally the new string formatter is sorely needed in Python.  
> 
> Really? You know, it's funny, but when I read problems that people
> have with python, I don't remember seeing that. Loads of people
> complain about the white space issue. Some people complain  about the
> speed. Lots of complaints about certain quirky behavior, but I have
> not come across any complaints about the string formatting.
> 
> In fact, from what I have seen, many of the "problems" being "fixed"
> seem to be non-problems.
> 
> I dunno, maybe it's just me.

I had an interesting experience with this recently.  I was giving a 
co-worker quick python into.  He's an experienced programer in various 
languages, but this was his first exposure to python.

He got really hung up on the % syntax.  By (bad) luck, he was trying to 
print a tuple (let's call it "t"), did

format % t

and was surprised at the result.  It set him off on a "but that's stupid, 
blah, blah, blah" rant.  I haven't absorbed the new syntax well enough to 
figure out if people will get hung up by this with the new syntax.