seeking deeper (language theory) reason behind Python design choice

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 3:44 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Tue, 08 May 2018 22:48:52 -0500, Python wrote:
>> I've always felt that this mentality was insulting to the programmer:
>> "You're too stupid to get this right."  Sure, I've created that bug in
>> other languages (or rather its inverse) but not since college.  You make
>> it a few times, you go nuts debugging it, you learn what it is, you
>> never do it again.
>
> And fortunately we don't have to deal with a steady stream of new
> programmers learning the language and making newbie errors, right?
>
> If all programmers were as awesome as you and never made typos, the world
> would be a better place. But we know from experience that even
> experienced C programmers can make this mistake by accident.

Yes, and I'd go further: I *am* too stupid to get this right. That's
why I have an editor that highlights certain words. (My current editor
colours every Python standard library module name, so if I happen to
create a variable called "time", it'll make it really obvious that I
am now shadowing an importable module. Or, as I recently did,
"sched".) That's why Python gives me tracebacks that show me exactly
where I messed up. That's why my code is full of debugging checks,
comments, and other tools to help me track down my mistakes after I
make them.

Because I *will* make mistakes. I will make a LOT of mistakes. And I
am not going to try to pretend that I don't.

ChrisA