Steven Bethard wrote: > I'm not sure I find it truly hateful, but definitely unnecessary. > TOOWTDI and all...
TOOWTDI Considered Harmful. There is confusion between "There's Only One Way To Do It" and "There's One Obvious Way To Do It". The first is pejorative, harmful if it were true but stupid since it is never true. There is never only one way to do anything but the most trivial things. Perhaps there is only one way to do a null-op, (pass), but that's about it. Even when people mean One Obvious and not Only One, it is still harmful because the emphasis is wrong. The emphasis is on the *restrictive nature* of a language which merely gives one obvious way of doing things. The motto from the Zen of Python is far more nuanced and sensible, although not as snappy: "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." The emphasis in the Zen is about *enabling* Python to have at least one (and preferably only one) obvious ways to do things. The Zen is about making sure that solutions are obvious in Python; TOOWTDI is about the paucity of solutions in the language, and I cringe every time I see it. See the difference? -- Steven. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
