On Sep 6, 12:56 pm, Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think there's been a widespread "kitchen sink" mentality around the > Python language for some time, which is where the multimethods > proposal, amongst others, fits in here.
Maybe that's one of two fixed points in the evolution of a programming language? The other one might be an almost non-designed and small language with a vast and flat library a la PHP and Zend. Apparently even Scheme moves into the kitchen sink today with the new R6RS specification. Python is going to be the-right-thing with abandoning the print statement or making lists a bit more monotyped with a type aware sort. The worse-is-better philosophy on the other hand is indifferent towards stylistic consistency and equipped with less nominalistic pedantry ( "this is a list and therefore you only have to use it as a list and not as a multiset..." ). This explains also the lack of interest into the std library which will be reduced to CPython services and basic datatypes. But there are also organizational issues and I don't even think that a lib that provides applications and domain specific services has to be necessarily maintained and approved by python-dev. I'd go even further and contend that's one of the issues where a rather large community such as Pythons could grow up and set code review standards ( and I mean *manual* code reviews of conscientous readers. I don't mean cheesecake or up(down)moddings in Web 2.0 style, implementing the "wisdom of the crowd" ). I can even live with Eggs and a not-so-common code base but not with low quality. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
