gratuitous new features in 2.0

[Martijn Faassen]

Alex Martelli <alex at magenta.com> wrote:
> "Martijn Faassen" <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote in message
[snip]
>> Oh, I agree. That was the point I was making, right? The realisation *now*
>> that if print had been a function all along would've avoided this hackish
>> addition is only a side-issue that I mentioned.

> Well, we may be in violent agreement on this, but this wasn't entirely
> clear to me; the "ought to have been" may have seemed more central to me
> than you intended it to be.

Well, 'ought to have been' means I regret now it isn't so, but it is,
so let's face the present situation; a 'print' statement. Has its nice
aspects as well, of course.

> The BDFL has argued, basically, that whether having print as a statement
> was best or not, we're stuck with it, THEREFORE we need to extend the
> core language to let print's output be more conveniently directed to
> a file.  I'm NOT convinced at all of the consequentiality: I think we
> may perfectly well accept "being stuck with print" (whether we're sort
> of happy, relatively indifferent, or very slightly saddened by that)
> while intensely believing that the print statement's role should _not_
> be expanded to output-to-file.  And I think this lack of consequentiality
> is very important, and needs to be emphasized.

Okay; this same argument was right there in my post you responded to
originally, though. Thanks for emphasizing it (Though perhaps you
made it before yourself, but at least I wasn't responding to you :)

[snip]
> I guess I'm basically arguing with the proponents of the print
> statement's functionality extension; I realize this is tilting
> at windmills, as we're no doubt stuck with the 'print>>' kludge
> anyway, but then, Havel was just as convinced he would not live
> to see communism crumble, but this did not stop him from braving
> far-worse repercussions than I'm likely to face,

Never underestimate the PSU, though! :)

Yeah, we're likely tilting at windmills.

[snip reference to interesting text]

>> >  But, if one DOES sort-of-like the statement, it need not follow
>> > that the statement's mission must be enlarged to make it able to output
>> > to a file, when that specific need (and others) are best served by a
>> > function (or method) even if the statement stays just as it is today.
>>
>> As I said in my post, right? Are you summarizing me? :)

> I've been justly accused of many faults, but, as "to summarize"
> implies concision, I can honestly aver that THIS is something
> I've never been guilty of.  I can always find a way to say in
> a hundred words what somebody else could say in a dozen.

Hm, I've noticed this. :)

> If you think our opinions on this issue are identical (this was
> not clear to me from your post, but I cannot rule it out)

In the interests of verbosity, I'll quote the relevant parts of my
initial post:

[start quote]

[Guido states that the function/method approach means deprecating it]
That was my initial conclusion too, but why, really? I mean, we are now
faced with two realistic alternatives:

  * add the >> stuff to 'print'

  * keep 'print' as it is, and add a few methods to the standard library,
    and possibly some built-ins.

The latter option does not mean we need to deprecate 'print'; it's just still
in my opinion a much cleaner solution than the >> stuff.

[snip stuff, including lament about how we'd have avoided these problems if
 print had been a function all along]

Not being ready to deprecate the print statement does not mean you're not
ready to add an alternative to 'print'. Presumably the >> stuff is
intended for advanced users, not for beginners. Presumably more advanced
users know how to use a method already (it's easy..no debates on whether
a comma should be there or whether >> should be usedor something else).
So what's the problem?

[end quote]

>, then
> you may want to say I was _paraphrasing_ your expression, or
> "glossating" them (in the technical sense; cfr
> http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,48743+1+47624,00.html).

All right. Or emphasizing or clarifying. :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?