On Sat, 6 Dec 2008 23:21:04 -0800 (PST) Lie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think we have to test this on newbies. [snip] > Now that's talking like a programmer! Ideas on how such a survey could be conducted? Anyone? > If this dead horse is revived because of that reason, then I'd go with > changing the error message to something that is less confusing to > newbies[1]. + googol > I remember being tripped with the (thinking that python > miscounted the number of argument) when I was new. This has the > advantage of backward compatibility and no syntax change, just less > misleading error message. > > [1] anything could work, but I like this one: (c is an instance of > class C) > if the code is: c.foo(...), Error: "TypeError: c.foo() takes exactly 3 > argument" > while if the code is: C.foo(...), Error: "C.foo() takes exactly 4 > arguments" > You can implement c.foo as a curried C.foo function, catch C.foo's > TypeError exception then reraise it as c.foo exception. I'm not sure that I'd find that less confusing. Because a c.foo() *does* take four arguments, not three. It's just that the first one is implicit (Right?). How about: "TypeError: c.foo() takes exactly 3 arguments in addition to the implicit instance reference." or "TypeError: c.foo() takes exactly 4 arguments (5 given, including the implicit instance reference)" ... or something less kludgy in that general direction. This would explain exactly what is wrong. /W -- My real email address is constructed by swapping the domain with the recipient (local part). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
