Simon Cozens wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 05:39:26PM -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
> > I propose, for example, "intval" for IV and "floatval" for NV.
>
> I reject. :) Larry has a neat little principle:
>
> Common operations should be "Huffman coded". That is, frequently used
> operators should be shorter than infrequently used ones. For how
> often it's used, the C<scalar> operator of Perl 5 is too long, in
> my estimation.
Well now we're off into philosophy and I think its pretty clear that
Python philosophy in this regard is going to be different than Perl
philosophy. I'll describe where I'm coming from and then drop it.
"Frequently used" is not global. When I started Perl and Python (each) I
started with a single project, bounded on either side by months of work
in other languages. And my first projects involved both code and
internals. Based on those experiences you know where I ended up. :-)
To this day, when I use Perl, my frequently used bits are the bits that
are infrequently used by sysadmins and CGI writers etc. and vice versa.
E.g. I never use the <> operator but I always use the -> operator.
I spend my whole life diving back and forth between technologies. Some
of them I know really well. Some of them I know only so-so. I'm one of
few people who know XML really well. Most people are just dabblers in
it. Where I have influence on specs I try to make specs that make sense
to dabblers.
> I think the same goes for type naming. You only have to understand what
> "IV" means *once*, and then you can just type two letters all the time,
> instead of the beautifully accurate and obviously easy to understand
> integer_guaranteed_to_hold_a_pointer_t.
Nobody's suggesting going that far!
And anyway, more annoying to me than IV is "NV" which implies that
floats have some kind of monopoly on "Number-ness" and integers are
chopped liver.
--
Paul Prescod
