Hi Steve,
actually I suspected the same at the first sight, but after realizing
"Guido" is the creator, I dug the python source code history and found
out he actually drafted this sample himself around 1991. Then I found in
his resume that:
> From 1986 till 1991 I was with the Amoeba project, headed by Sape
Mullender
Sape's phone back then at CWI was |+20-592 4139. |
After that I found another colleague of them is Jack Jansen, with phone
20 592 4098
And 20-592-4127 might be a shared phone number, as it was listed as
overall contact number in some of CWI's publications, so likely Guido
and Irv (not sure who that refers to, which bothers me a bit still, but
I can live with it) both used that at some time, which is also shown in
the sample program.
So, 'tel' seems to be a sample telephone book of CWI, with only the last
4 digits.
The program's meaning becomes obvious only after all this history study.
It was fun for sure, but IMO most readers won't go that far, as I didn't
find any of such explanations online so far.
Best,
Xuan.
On 5/11/18 9:40 AM, Xuan Wu wrote:
Hi,
when reading some of the sample codes in the official tutorial, I had
to do research to understand the background of naming and string
constants, like those strings from the script of Monty Python. Still
this one in $5.5 is the most challenging so far:
>>>tel = {'jack': 4098, 'sape': 4139}
>>>tel['guido'] = 4127
>>>tel
{'sape': 4139, 'guido': 4127, 'jack': 4098}
>>>tel['jack']
4098 ...
I did quite some digging to confirm my guess of the hidden meaning,
during which I realized it was initially written 27 years ago, without
much change so far. Now I'm curious if its meaning is obvious to most
nowadays beginners even as English speakers.
In general, I wonder if there was discussion of revising some sample
programs for better readability or adding more comments/introductory
texts?
Thanks.
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