On 11 April 2018 at 04:41, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> > But in a way that more intuitively expresses the intent of the code, it >> > would be great to have more options on the market. >> >> It's worth adding a reminder here that "having more options on the >> market" is pretty directly in contradiction to the Zen of Python - >> "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do >> it". > > I'm afraid I'm going to (mildly) object here. At least you didn't > misquote the Zen as "Only One Way To Do It" :-) > > The Zen here is not a prohibition against there being multiple ways to > do something -- how could it, given that Python is a general purpose > programming language there is always going to be multiple ways to write > any piece of code? Rather, it exhorts us to make sure that there are one > or more ways to "do it", at least one of which is obvious.
I apologise if I came across as implying that I thought the Zen said that having multiple ways was prohibited. I don't (and certainly the Zen doesn't mean that). Rather, I was saying that using "it gives us an additional way to do something" is a bad argument in favour of a proposal for Python. At a minimum, the proposal needs to argue why the new feature is "more obvious" than the existing ways (bonus points if the proposer is Dutch - see the following Zen item ;-)), or why it offers a capability that isn't possible with the existing language. And I'm not even saying that the OP hasn't attempted to make such arguments (even if I disagree with them). All I was pointing out was that the comment "it would be great to have more options on the market" implies a misunderstanding of the design goals of Python (hence my "reminder" of the principle I think is relevant here). Sorry again if that's not what it sounded like. Paul _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
