[Steven D'Aprano] > Just because I challenge your statements doesn't mean I'm attacking you.
No. Telling me I'm having an extreme overreaction means you're attacking me. Pushing the narrative that I'm irrational by enumerating the least charitable interpretations of my words possible then claiming you were just discussing *ideas* is disingenuous. I don't know who you think you're kidding, Steven. You could have simply asked me what I meant. It would have been much easier. All those extra words serve a very clear purpose and everyone knows it, so you can stop acting "sad and worried" when someone calls you out. I explained my position on lambda as fully as I care to in my response to Niel if you care to read it. I only think lambda harms Python in so far as there were better alternatives that communicate their intention much better and are more readable. That's an opinion. If you must know, i'm not currently frothing at the mouth as I state it. My original post was agreeing with you. Supporting your own words. If you don't agree with my position that we should avoid jargon for jargon's sake, then what exactly did you mean when you said, "although possibly a less jargon name would be nicer?" Can you articulate why you think it might be nicer to use a less jargon name? What about my saying it all of a sudden makes it an "extreme overreaction"? [Steven D'Aprano] > You've said that the choice of keyword, "lambda", has caused harm. Given > the chance to clarify what you meant, you stood by your comment that the > choice of keyword "lambda" has done real, significant, non-trivial harm > to Python (the language, or the community). What are you talking about? I explained exactly what I meant: I think there are better ways that anonymous functions could have been > implemented. I've already said in past discussions, I think the expression > should come before the signature because the signature is often obvious > from context so placing it before the logic is kinda noisy. I don't know > what the best syntax would have been, but I refuse to believe that an > esoteric word from an esoteric branch of calculus with an arbitrary > etymology was the absolute best choice available. I think the harm that > choice caused is relatively minor, but I don't think it was a great choice. Notice: I never said "real, significant, non-trivial harm" anywhere in this entire discussion. I never said anything close to that. Stop jamming bullshit in my mouth to suit your narrative that I'm "extremely overreacting". It's not cute. [Steven D'Aprano] > This is a genuine question. I'm trying to understand your comments, not just > dismiss them. If you're so genuinely interested, then how come you couldn't be bothered to read my explaination above? [Steven D'Aprano] > Presumably you fear the same thing will happen again if we choose > "partial" (otherwise, why raise the issue?). There is no issue. I've already conceded that. Please read the conversation that followed with Neil Girdhar. I was simply stating a preference and trying to articulate my reasoning behind that preference. My whole intent was to +1 your alternative and say "I prefer given to partial". That's it. [Steven D'Aprano] > Python does have a long-standing tradition of sticking to mostly English > words, a tradition for which I personally am grateful. I am too. I'd like that to continue. [Steven D'Aprano] > But we ought to "check our privilege", as they say. I think that if we > as a community automatically reject any word because it isn't "plain > English", that would be a sign of unexamined privilege and quite rude to > boot. Rude? Who would it be rude to if we had chosen "anonfunc" instead of "lambda"? [Steven D'Aprano] > How can we insist that 3/4 of the world learn English words to use Python Do you really think that 3/4 of the world learns English just to write Python? Do you think the only english they learn are the built-ins and standard library of Python? English is a dominant language in business and programming. That statement is no more "privileged" than the statement that the US Dollar is the most popular global reserve currency. It's a fact that I have no control over. [Steven D'Aprano] > ...if we aren't even willing to move out of our own comfort zone to > the extent of learning accurate jargon terms from our own profession? Very few of us are computer scientists by profession. That's not even where 'lambda' comes from. In computer science, it's called an "anonymous function". "lambda" comes from lambda calculus. [Steven D'Aprano] > If we go down this path... and choose "given" over "partial", we ought to > be > clear about the reasons why. I gave my reasons: it's shorter and less jargon while remaining fairly clear (in my opinion) You've already claimed that "possibly a less jargon name would be nicer", so I don't see the fuss. Apparently it's extreme when I say it. On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 8:06 PM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Answering a few of Abe's comments out of order... > > On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 05:20:25PM -0500, Abe Dillon wrote: > > I didn't realize I'd hit such a nerve. [...] I'm truly sorry > > if I hurt your feelings. > [...] > > But you seem to have some grudge against me. I don't get all the > > outrage over what I thought was a fairly benign post. Did I do > > something to make you so angry at me? I'd like to resolve whatever it > > is instead of having to deal with this every time I post. > > Have we become so sensitive to disagreement that criticism of ideas is > immediately seen as "angry", "a grudge", "outrage"? If so, I find that > sad and worrying. > > My feelings aren't hurt, you haven't hit a nerve, I'm not angry at > anything you wrote, and I'm not holding a grudge. I thought we were > discussing *ideas*, not attacking each other. Just because I challenge > your statements doesn't mean I'm attacking you. > > Moving on... > > [...] > > I suspect that most programmers couldn't describe the difference > > between a type and a class. > > In Python, there is none. > > There is a sense in which types are different from classes, but that > sense is not fundamental, and in practice many languages blur the lines > between them. > > > > I suspect that most programmers couldn't tell you the difference > > between an exception or an error. > > There's a school of thought that most programmers can't program. > > https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ > > But regardless, we don't design Python based on the misunderstandings of > the least competent, most ignorant demographic. That's why we have > exceptions, only some of which are errors, and not > > StopIterationError > KeyboardInterruptError > SystemExitError > > etc. > > I believe that using a well-designed language should gently encourage > the programmer to learn, by example. I didn't know the the functional > programming techniques of map, reduce or partial until I came across > them in Python. I think I'm a better programmer and less ignorant now > than I was for that. > > Consequently, when I hear you describing how few programmers know the > term "partial", what I think is "what a great opportunity for them to > learn something new!". > > Or not, of course. For those of us who don't care for functional > programming idioms, there's no need to use partial in our own code. > > > > [Steven D'Aprano] > > > > > Do you mean to imply that there are people who looked at Python, > > > loved the language, but decided to use something else because they > > > didn't like the choice of the keyword "lambda"? > > > > No. Not at all. Is that what you got out of my sentence? Am I really > > the one being extreme? > > Yes, that's what I got out of your sentence. If you don't mean that, I > don't know what you do mean. > > You've said that the choice of keyword, "lambda", has caused harm. Given > the chance to clarify what you meant, you stood by your comment that the > choice of keyword "lambda" has done real, significant, non-trivial harm > to Python (the language, or the community). Presumably you fear the same > thing will happen again if we choose "partial" (otherwise, why raise the > issue?). > > Harm in what sense? That's what I tried to ask earlier, perhaps not as > clearly as I intended. > > If the choice of name "lambda" doesn't repel would-be users, or cause > bugs, or harm performance, then what harm does it do? > > This is a genuine question. I'm trying to understand your comments, not > just dismiss them. > > You made a comment much stronger than merely "I don't like the name", > claiming that the name is harmful. I could just dismiss your comment as > meaningless hyperbole and ignore it, but I thought to give you the > respect of assuming that you might be correct but I just wasn't > understanding why. Hence my question. > > > > [Steven D'Aprano] > > > > > Remember that to millions of programmers in the world, "function" is > > > just as much an obscure foreign piece of jargon they have to memorise > as > > > "lambda" is to English-speakers. > > > > > > Maybe we should use Egyptian Hieroglyphs then. Even the playing field. It > > doesn't matter anyway, right? It's all nonsense to someone... > > No, we ought to stick to ASCII, for reasons I've discussed recently in > other threads. And Python does have a long-standing tradition of > sticking to mostly English words, a tradition for which I personally am > grateful. > > But we ought to "check our privilege", as they say. I think that if we > as a community automatically reject any word because it isn't "plain > English", that would be a sign of unexamined privilege and quite rude to > boot. How can we insist that 3/4 of the world learn English words to use > Python, if we aren't even willing to move out of our own comfort zone to > the extent of learning accurate jargon terms from our own profession? > > None of this is to rule out "given". (I think it's certainly better than > Perl's choice of "assuming".) But if we go down this path (which is by > no means decided!), and choose "given" over "partial", we ought to be > clear about the reasons why. > > > -- > Steve > _______________________________________________ > Python-ideas mailing list > Python-ideas@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >
_______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
