Andre Pang wrote:
On 14/09/2006, at 11:22 AM, O Plameras wrote:

You've said "let's overload plus for time to mean we add a whole day".
Andre and myself have said "picking 'one day' for what adding an integer to a time means is arbitraty and unobvious to anyone but the person who first
decided it."

Then ask, if unobvious; don't jump to conclusions.

This is exactly _why_ your code is bad.  Writing

  time+1

Are you forgetting that the post was in response within a 'thread' of 'overloading' ?

It was clarified if you care to go back and check the post.

is unobvious about the behaviour, for the reasons I mentioned above. Since it's unobvious, I cannot jump to conclusions. I have to look up the documentation for what the overloaded + operation does (or ask _you_ what it does and potentially knock you out of a coding zone, which is even worse).

I'm strongly of the opinion that time types are not good types to overload
like this.

Value judging is a debate that never ends with no winners and/or losers. I'll not engage you in that.

This is not a value judgement with personal bias. This is an objective judgement about code readability -- although there's an assumption that you do care about code maintainability and readability. I am saying that you are wrong in choosing overloading for the purpose that you have mentioned, because it makes the code less maintainable. This is something that can be objectively measured: have a third party come along, read the code, and see if they can figure out what it does.


I covered this in my other post. Anyway, I've explained, albeit clearly, what is meant by 'value judgment'.
But it's also, unjustified to make value judgments (cynism or bad faith) especially as to the character or motives of programmers like Guido van Rossum when it's so negative. Again, GvR is right and Andre is'probably' right depending on the context of the problem being solved.

Sorry, Guido van Rossum proved to me that he didn't know his programming language theory (PLT) when he confused strong typing with static typing in an interview several years ago. This is basic PLT knowledge, and is something that anyone who takes a programming language course at university will get correct. He certainly does know the difference today, but I worry that he didn't know the difference when Python 2.0 was out.


Did you tell ( or email ) him and so you'll know under what context the question and answer was ?

I don't think it is ethical or professional on your part to mention his name in the first place because the chances for him to clarify his position, right or wrong, is extremely remote. Besides you based your judgment on one interview and you disparage him for that ? And you want project yourself as better than him (At least you know your programming principles?). Common !

My question is to you: are you benefited by his work one way or the other despite your opinion of him ?


O Plameras

_______________________________________________
coders mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/coders

Reply via email to