[Edu-sig] re: More spillover re the division PEP

[Kirby Urner]

>
>Tremendous confusion has been caused, in my opinion, by not
>being explicit about defining constituencies.
>
>ART

If PyGeo is distributed open source, then there's
always the implied invitation to (a) study the code
and (b) tweak it.  You never know when your scripters
will be doing this, out of curiosity if nothing else.

If exporting an API in the form of a scripting language,
you can write a layer of code to parse student input,
and have your symbols behave any way you choose.  "/"
could have whatever behavior you like, as you're in a
position to interpret a mini-language of your own
devising.  In this sense, CPython is an API to C
(and Jython to Java).  But then C is an API to assembler
and ultimately the computer chip's instruction set.

In any case, these are all just hats.  I'm a newbie
with respect to language A, casual user of B, non-user
of C, pro with D.  Always a newbie, always a pro --
that's life in the big city.(*)

Kirby

(*) you might say true newbies don't know any programming
at all, but even infants are starting to control their
environments.  We're all programmers by birth.  CP4E is
just another name for using language of any kind, the C
in CP4E being the predictable, machine-like nature of
the universe itself.