Mathematics has existed for millenia. Hindu-arabic numerals (base-10 numbers) have been known for about one millennium The boolean domain is only a 100 years old. Unsurprisingly it is not quite 'first-class' yet: See http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1070.html [Lifted from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EqualVsTrueFalse ]
---------------------------- "In retrospect, one might be tempted to regard the introduction of something as simple as the boolean domain as a minor invention, but I think that that would be a grave mistake: it is a great invention because, being so simple, it is such a powerful simplifier. It is of the same level as the introduction of natural numbers, which enabled us to add 3 to 5, regardless of whether we are adding apples or pears." "George Boole made a radical invention, so radical, in fact, that now, more than a century later, the scientific community has not absorbed it yet. (To stay with the metaphor: officially, boolean expressions may have reached the status of first-class citizens, in practice — because old habits and prejudices die hard— they are still the victims of discrimination.) Let me give you a few examples." "In the programming language FORTRAN, as conceived a century after Boole published his invention, boolean expressions are allowed, but there are no boolean variables! Their introduction into programming had to wait until the design of ALGOL 60." ------------------------ So, M Harris problem is that python could almost be a language for the 'masses' (whatever that might mean) were it not for warts like "l not is empty" is shorten-able to just "l" Dijkstra's problem (paraphrased) is that python, by choosing the FORTRAN alternative of having a non-first-class boolean type, hinders scientific/mathematical thinking/progress. I tend to agree with Dijkstra's view that the boolean type should be given more respect except for the small fact that the computer's ALU is based on the logic-arithmetic pun: half-adder = xor (half)-carry = and -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
