Objects in Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber
<wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 09:55:27 +0100, Mark Lawrence
> <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> declaimed the following in
> gmane.comp.python.general:
>
>>
>> I'm just wondering out aloud if the number of times this type of thread
>> has been debated here will fit into a Python long or float?
>
>         Well, since I don't think one can have a fractional debate (maybe if
> someone starts a thread and NOBODY ever follows up on it), then float's
> don't gain us anything there.
>
>         Presuming a double-precision float, we would have 14-15 significant
> digits for the mantissa -- so anything greater than
> (9)99,999,999,999,999 will have lost accuracy. In contrast Python longs
> have effectively unlimited significant digits.

I wonder if some people are applying an alternative form of duck
typing - if it quacks like a "should Python have variables" debate, it
gets silenced with that universal grey tape...

ChrisA