anomaly

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 12 May 2015 06:48 am, Mel Wilson wrote:

> On Tue, 12 May 2015 02:35:23 +1000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 11 May 2015 11:37 pm, Mel Wilson wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sun, 10 May 2015 14:12:44 -0500, boB Stepp wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I have to admit being surprised by this, too. I am just now studying
>>>> on how to write my own classes in Python, and have come to realize
>>>> that doing this is *possible*, but the *surprise* to me is why the
>>>> language design allowed this to actually be done.
>>> 
>>> Read Cory Doctorow lately on the War Against General Purpose Computing,
>>> where a bunch of people who don't really understand are trying to make
>>> it impossible for any computer to do something that is The Wrong Thing.
>> 
>> I think you are conflating two different ideas of "the Wrong Thing".
> 
> I don't think so.  A formal solution to a problem, i.e. a solution coded
> as a computer program, is limited to the things that can be done using
> formal techniques.  Whether it's people trying to enact their social
> standards in code, or whether it's people trying to nail the door shut
> against everything they "don't expect", or "think is illogical", the
> limits will still be there.

Do you think that Python is part of Doctorow's war against general purpose
computing because it doesn't have a GOTO command?

Do you think that using Python reduces your control over your computer
because Python code has well-defined integer overflow behaviour?

When you have had a bug in your code, and Python has raised an exception
with a nice traceback and an informative error message, how many times have
you thought "I wish Python would just seg fault"?


-- 
Steven