On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:45:23 +0200, Ulrich Eckhardt wrote: > I didn't say "Pass should be a function!" but asked "What do you > think?". You are assuming lots of things about my goals and jumping to > conclusions like that I'm complaining about the stupid Python syntax, > that I'm a frustrated noob, that I want someone to fix that syntax, but > that is not the case! I'm engaging in a discussion here exactly in order > to test the idea I had.
Fair point. I underestimated you. But go back and re-read your first post, and see if you can understand *why* I underestimated you. You really didn't give any sign that you had given this question much detailed thought. Perhaps if you had mentioned that you had not decided whether this was a good idea and was looking for arguments both for and against, this tone of this discussion would have been very different. >> It took me a long time to learn that, for an established language like >> Python, change is nearly always for the worse, and any change that >> requires changing existing code better have a very good excuse. > > ...so what do you do when you have an idea? You think about it on your > own, right? I do so, too, but I also engage in discussions with others. > See? BTW: I think you missed the implications of this thread's topic and > the snide remark about forcing people to change their code, i.e. that no > existing code has to change (apart from the Python implementation, of > course), even if pass was made a function! I think that you misunderstand the purpose of from __future__ import. It is a *temporary* measure, always. Features which are not backward compatible are FIRST introduced as __future__ features, and THEN a release or two later, they become mandatory. (Unless they are dropped, which has not happened yet.) There have been seven __future__ features as of Python 3.2: absolute_import (enabled in 2.5, mandatory in 2.7) division (enabled in 2.2, mandatory in 3.0) generators (enabled in 2.2, mandatory in 2.3) nested_scopes (enabled in 2.1, mandatory in 2.2) print_function (enabled in 2.6, mandatory in 3.0) unicode_literals (enabled in 2.6, mandatory in 3.0) with_statement (enabled in 2.5, mandatory in 2.6) In any case, I acknowledge that I was wrong about your motivation. I made a guess based on the limited information I had, and based on my own history, and you tell me my guess was wrong. I accept that. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
