Python Worst Practices

[Jon Ribbens]

On 2015-03-03, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> Jon Ribbens wrote:
>> On 2015-03-02, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>> A pub's a bar; a bar's a gate; a gate's a street
>> 
>> If each of those is supposed to be English first and then the American
>> equivalent second, then I'm afraid the first one is misleading and the
>> other two are just nonsense.
>
> Unfortunately not nonsense.

Sorry, it is nonsense. Trust me, I've lived here all my life.

> A pub (short for public drinking house) is another name for a bar. Yes, they 
> sometimes differ in their connotations ("pubs are decorated in wood, bars in 
> chrome") but essentially they are the same thing.

No - as I said, it's highly misleading to pretend they are synonyms.

> A bar is also a rod of solid material, like a steel bar, and "a barrier or 
> restriction to an action or advance".

Yes. Your argument is similar to "a cat is a four-legged furry animal,
a dog is a four-legged furry animal, therefore cats are dogs". If you
saw a gate blocking (or even "barring") your path, no English person
would say "that bar is in the way".

> And, sure enough, there is an old meaning of "gate" which means "a
> way, road, street, or path".

Well, yes. Emphasis on "old". But it turns out that English as it was
used historically before the USA even existed is not the same as
English as it is used today in the UK, any more that it is the same as
English in the USA today.