evaluation question

[Thomas Passin]

On 1/31/2023 4:24 AM, Muttley at dastardlyhq.com wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Jan 2023 12:57:33 +1300
> Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>> On 30/01/23 10:41 pm, Muttley at dastardlyhq.com wrote:
>>> What was the point of the upheaval of converting
>>> the print command in python 2 into a function in python 3 if as a function
>>> print() doesn't return anything useful?
>>
>> It was made a function because there's no good reason for it
>> to have special syntax in the language.
> 
> All languages have their ugly corners due to initial design mistakes and/or
> constraints. Eg: java with the special behaviour of its string class, C++
> with "=0" pure virtual declaration. But they don't dump them and make all old
> code suddenly cease to execute.
> 
> Pragmatism should always come before language purity.
> 

It was more fundamental than that, and not mainly about print():

https://snarky.ca/why-python-3-exists/