Alex Martelli wrote: > An alternative theory, of course, is "God made the natural numbers; all > else is the work of man" -- and that one is by a German, too (Kronecker, > if I recall correctly).
Yes, it was Kronecker. But even natural numbers are usually constructed with sets using Peano's axioms. > The hope to found all of mathematics on set theory was primarily a > _British_ effort, as I see it (Russell and Whitehead), and failed a > long time ago... I'm not sure what, if anything, a mathematician of > today would propose as the foundational theory... Perhaps "string theory" ;-) So probably strings should become the fundamental datatype in Python (immutable strings of course) :-) > But OO really requires a different mindset, particularly when operating > under a regime of "mutable" objects. "A circle IS-AN ellipse" in > Euclidean geometry... but inheriting Circle from Ellipse doesn't work in > OO if the objects are changeable, since you can, e.g., change > eccentricity in an Ellipse but not in a Circle... Good example. -- Christoph -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
