Fortran (1957) had line comments. C (1972) replaced these with non- nested block comments. C++ (1983) added here-to-EOL comments. Python (1991) keeps here-to-EOL comments but replaces block comments with multi-line quotes. Block comments and multi-line quotes both serve the same purpose as doc comments. Block comments, especially if they nest, are helpful for commenting out code. Multi-line quotes serve to add text.
Is Python, in this particular, an advance over C++? I wrote a lot of Java (here-to-EOL and block comments) without ever feeling the need for multi-line quotes. I've written a little Perl and found multi-line quotes useful for responding to -help switches. On the other hand -help switches are very old-fashioned, a direction I'll not be pointing my tiny beginner's language. (A brief article on programming language geneology is at http://www.MartinRinehart.com/articles/history-programming-languages.html .) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
