Magnus Lycka wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > a reminder" that the change is inplace. How arrogant! While > > I'm sure the designers had kindly intentions. my memory, though > > bad, is not that bad, and I object to being forced to write code > > that is more clunky than need be, because the designers thought > > they needed to help me with my memory. > > Such as being arm-twisted into writing horrible things > like x = sorted(l) instead of x = l.sort()?
The first statement is not the same as the second. > It sounds a > bit as if someone locked you into a cellar and forced > you to program Python, just to torture you. I guess the > next step will be the comfy armchair! ;) > > Python has its roots in ABC, a language intended for > teaching programming to beginners, and it goes to great > lengths to make it easy to do things right. In my opinion, "do things right" is my fundamental beef with Python. Dispite claims, I don't believe Python's designers have a monopoly on the definition of "right". > it also avoids the mistake of introducing hurdles in a > vain attempts to prevent programmer mistakes. Such hurdles > typically lead to ugly workarounds. There are a few cases > when things don't work as some people would expect them > to work, but I think there are good resons for that. > > I'm surprised that you don't complain about not being able > to do "while x = f(): ..." while you're at it. That's also > a restriction of the kind you seem to rebel against. I would have but fortunately the introduction of iterators spared you from having to read about that :-) > I'm pretty sure Guido didn't think a bit about *your* > memory capacity when he designed Python, but rather wanted > to avoid spending his and other programmers' time on helping > people with yet another set of silly bugs. I serious doubt sort's return value of lack thereof made any measurable difference in the time spent helping people. > > There is much about Perl's rich functionality that is very worthy. > > Unfortunately, as you know, it's syntax leaves a lot to be desired. > > Which is mainly a consequence of TMTOWTDI... > If you want something more perlish, but with somewhat more > sane syntax, you might want to try Ruby. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
