Why doesn't Python include non-blocking keyboard input function?

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Steve D'Aprano
<steve+python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 02:03 am, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> born in those lackadaisical days when "Extended ASCII" was a single
>> thing, because the rest of the world didn't exist
>
> I know you're being sarcastic, but "extended ASCII" *never* was a single
> thing, even for Americans who ignored the rest of the world. You had IBM PC
> extended ASCII, Apple Macintosh extended ASCII, Hewlett-Packard extended
> ASCII, Atari extended ASCII ("ATASCII"), Commodore extended ASCII
> ("PETSCII"), and more.
>

I know; the non-rest-of-world mentality is a consequence of writing
code solely for an IBM PC, as well as solely for your locale. We used
what is today called codepage 437 - why would anyone need anything
else? I guess, in theory, people who speak Greek or Russian would need
to use something else. But then they miss out on all these awesome box
drawing characters, and.... bah, that doesn't matter anyway, does it.

Took the rise of the web before I, as a programmer and as a person,
got a proper appreciation for i18n. And even then it was slow going.
Way better for someone to learn the right way first.

ChrisA