Steve D'Aprano <steve+pyt...@pearwood.info> writes: <snip> > [...] try something more common: > > 1/2 > > Most people aren't expecting integer division, but true division, and silently > returning the wrong result (0 instead of 0.5) is a silent source of > bugs.
I'm the sure that expectation depends on their background and previous programming experience, and since I don't know much about most people when they first write 1/2 in Python, I must conceded that you may be right. But is that really the point? Was the result of 1/2 determined by a poll to find out what most people expected? If so, who were these people -- the result would depend very largely on the selection? But there is a stronger claim (which I think you also made) that a floating point result is the correct one. However, some people with little experience of floating point arithmetic (I certainly can't say most but it must be quite few) will expect 1/10 to return a tenth. For /them/, the floating point result is silently wrong and a source of bugs. If I were aiming a language at beginners, I'd make 1/10 be a rational or a type error. However, I don't think that is Python's main demographic, so 1/10 giving something not quite one tenth may well be the correct design choice. <snip> > And 1/2 doesn't have to return an int. Why is this such a big deal? I'm sure it's not deliberate, but 1/2 is a bad example because it can be exactly represented in the most common implementations. To get a more fruitful exchange of views, a division like 1/3 or 1/10 might be a better example. <snip> -- Ben. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
