code review

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 02:55:48 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> Oh yes, absolutely consistent. Consistency. It's a CR 1/2 monster found
>> on page 153 of the 3.5th Edition Monster Manual.
>
> GvR is fond of quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson:
>
> "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. Dungeons and Dragons has specs
for a hobgoblin warrior :)

> Perhaps the world would be better off if mathematicians threw out the
> existing precedence rules and replaced them with a strict left-to-right
> precedence. (Personally, I doubt it.)
>
> But until they do, consistency with mathematics is far more important
> than the foolish consistency of left-to-right precedence.

And if they ever do, it'll break consistency with past centuries of
mathematical writing. Imagine (taking this to another realm) that it's
decided that since Wolfram is now called Tungsten, it should have the
chemical symbol 'T' instead of 'W'. This is far more consistent,
right? And Iron should be I, not Fe. We'll move Iodine to Io (and
Europium to Europa and Gallium to Ganymede?), and tritium (the isotope
of hydrogen) can become H3. It'd make today's chemistry notes look as
archaic and unreadable as those using alchemical symbols, only the
actual symbols are the same, making it ambiguous. Nope. Better to
stick with what's standardized.

ChrisA