[Chicago] Chicago Python User Group: Thurs. July 13, 2006 7pm.

[Jason R Huggins]

Ian Bicking wrote on 07/12/2006 06:24:55 PM:

> Chris McAvoy wrote:
> > Eeep.  Now my presentation is going to be all anticipated.  This is
> > seriously going to be a let down to anyone that's like "what can we
> > take from Perl 6?"

Well, didn't someone say in the announcement that this was going to be the 
best meeting ever? :-)

> In case you are wondering, Guido has already said that Python 3k will 
> not have unicode operators, unlike Perl 6.  So we won't be able to say
> 
>    if a ≥ b:
>        a = a ÷ x

One reason Guido might have said that (pure conjecture) is that most of 
the characters you used in your email (except for the above example) 
showed up as square boxes in my email client (Notes), and in IE. I had to 
load the ChiPy archive in Firefox to see the characters you were talking 
about. Of course, I probably need to change some default system setting to 
make this problem disappear (and the characters you used *appear*.) But 
Perl programmers of the future will need smart editors that understand 
unicode all the way down... Not a problem per se, we Pythoners tell people 
to not use lame text editors (like MS Notepad) to make it easier in 
dealing with Python's sig. whitespace. This sounds similar to the 
discussion of the Atom Publishing Protocol, too. One big argument 
*against* the use of PUT & DELETE in the protocol was that most HTTP 
libraries and web browsers didn't support those methods as well as GET & 
POST. Backwards compatibility issues are always a thorny subject.

Also, if Perl supports unicode characters as core statement operators, and 
Python doesn't... this might be setting up a nice little "notation war" in 
the lines of Newton vs Leibniz in the Calculus Wars. (
http://tinyurl.com/lkvd4). Python is all about readability, but Perl 6's 
creative use of unicode (and/or MathML) might actually make it *more* 
readable than the equivalent Python code. And *that* just breaks my brain 
to even contemplate. Of course, if we start a Python vs Perl war over 
unicode notation in source code, that might actually be fun and be 
noteworthy centuries later (like Newton vs Leibniz)... So, let's put on a 
language war! (Chris, see you tonight!) :-)

- Jason