[ I pruned the cross-posting down to a reasonable level ] Ken Tilton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote: > > > This is second-hand, as I don't actually follow Python closely, but > > from what I've heard, they now have reasonable scoping rules (or maybe > > they're about to, I'm not sure). And you can use def as a > > Scheme-style inner define, so it's essentially a LABELS that gets the > > indentation wrong. > > Cool. And I know how much you like labels/flet. :) Well, I love LABELS but I hate inner defines with an equal passion -- so for me it's a wash :-) As much as I like nice low-level, close-to-the-machine mechanisms as labels and lambda, sometimes you just want the high-level expressiveness of tagbody/go, which Python doesn't have ... which in my opinion is quite a crime to readability and the ability to transcribe Knuth algorithms, which any engineer should find offensive to their sensibilities. > > This means they have proper closures, just not > > anonymous ones. And an egregiously misnamed lambda that should be > > fixed or thrown out. > > If Python gets proper macros it won't matter one bit that they only > > have named closures, since you can macro that away in a blink of an > > eye. > > Ah, well, there we go again. Without sexpr notation, the lexer/parser > again will be "hard", and "hardly worth it": we get even more sour > grapes, this time about macros not being such a big deal. > > One of the hardest things for a technologist to do is admit that a > neat idea has to be abandoned. Initial success creates a giddy > over-commitment to the design choice. After then all difficulties get > brushed aside or kludged. Y'never know, they could always Greenspun their way to almost-sexps. What with the way that selective pressure works, it's gonna be that or die, so it is a possibility. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
