Guido van Rossum wrote: > Python's philosophy about (built-in) data types, inherited from ABC, > is to offer a few powerful clearly distinct choices rather than lots > of alternatives with overlapping usages. This reduces the time it > takes to choose a data type and reduces the risk of picking the wrong > type. (You seem to be indicating that this is indeed what's happening > to you in Lisp. :-)
Speaking about the new dequeue type, I have the impression that this reasoning applies there a bit, too? Dequeues of course have applications, and I saw them used, especially by newcomers to the language. So I like their functionality. But actually, I'm not so convinced if we need to introduce a new datatype. How about an extension to normal lists that does a little tracking of use-cases and decides about changing its implementation upon the presence of inserts/deletes at the lower end of the list? I'm btw. not sure if this raises an implicit/explicitiness issue. My question is if it is necessary to put the burden about explicitly choosing a specialized two-ended list on the programmer, or if it is simple enough to make lists just do the right thing, if lists are used in a dequeue-style manner. Or is this maybe too much magic happening? merry christmas -- chris -- Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> tismerysoft GmbH : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9A : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/ 14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/ work +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776 fax +49 30 80 90 57 05 PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04 whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/ _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com