Are the critiques in "All the things I hate about Python" valid?

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 2018-02-18 22:55, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> writes:
>>>> "positive odd integers greater than 10 but less than 15003 divisible by
>>>> 17 except for 850, 867 and 1394; or primes that aren't Mersenne
>>>> primes"....
>> It *could* be a type, if your type system was sufficiently flexible to
>> allow you to specify something in that level of detail. Of course no
>> existing type system is.
> 
> Of course dependent types could do that (they have a type for every
> proposition in constructive predicate calculus).  You might also be able
> to do it with Liquid Haskell's refinement types, though automatically
> checking them might not be so easy.
> 
>> That's an easy one: even Pascal in the 1970s could deal with enumerated
>> types like the values 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. (I think.)
> 
> Idunno about Pascal, but Ada has integer range types.

Back in the early 1980s, I took a few courses involving Pascal,
and it certainly supported subranges then. Quoting from my
text[1]:

   A _scalar subrange_ data type is a data type composed of
   a specified range of any of the other standard or user-
   defined scalar types, except type REAL.

   We define a subrange type with a TYPE declaration of the
   following format.

     TYPE type-name = lowerlimit..upperlimit;

   [...]

   Examples of subrange declarations are:

     TYPE EXAMSCORES = 0..100;

Of course, Pascal being Pascal, a function to return the sum
of an array of INTEGER would refuse to return the sum of an
array of EXAMSCORES.[2]


[1] _An Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving With
Pascal_; Schneider, Weingart, and Perlman; (C) 1978
[2] Kernighan examines a similar issue in Section 2.1 of
"Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language",
<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs655/readings/bwk-on-pascal.html>

-- 
Michael F. Stemper
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him talk like Mr. Ed
by rubbing peanut butter on his gums.