On 22 Jun., 08:46, John Nagle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > PEP 3107 seems to add negative value to the language. The > ability to add arbitrary attributes to parameters which can then > be interpreted by some external library yet to be defined is > a "l33t feature", one that's more cute than useful. Type-based > dispatching is cute, but not really essential to Python.
I guess you refer to the generic functions PEP. Otherwise type based dispatching is what Psyco does implicitely by caching variants of natively compiled code blocks that can be considered as anonymous functions. But then Psyco has to perform continous measurements and either select a precompiled block if an appropriate signature has been found or return code to the bytecode interpreter for further evaluation. This scheme is an example for type directed evaluation that does not interfere with Pythons default semantics. Personally I appreciate having more control over expressions by means of annotations. I also do think it's valuable for component adaptions. So far I fail to see why it shall harm Python or having any impact on its flexibility. Being "unusal" is not an argument neither are vague apprehensions that Python will be locked into a poor type system with rigid default semantics. Kay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
