Py3K idea: why not drop the colon?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:22:46 +0000, Antoon Pardon wrote:

>> Redundancy is not something to be valued for its own sake. It is only
>> valuable when it actually gains you something.
> 
> In the same way it is not something to be eliminated for its own
> sake.

On the contrary, redundancy implies more work somewhere: e.g. more work
for the parser, more effort needed by the python-dev crew, bigger
binaries, larger code bases, more complex test suites, slower development,
longer downloads. Whatever the nature of the redundant thing, there will
be a cost to it. If that cost isn't outweighed by some advantage it should
be eliminated merely because it is redundant and therefore a cost we could
do without.

I suppose, theoretically, if you could find some cost-free redundancy,
something that just happened for free, we would have no reason to care
whether it existed or not. But since cost-free redundancies don't exist,
or at least are very rare, we should prefer to remove redundancies UNLESS
they offer some advantage.



-- 
Steven.