> On 5 Jan 2021, at 11:38, Paul Sokolovsky <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 21:03:06 +1100
> Chris Angelico <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 8:32 PM Paul Sokolovsky <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>> And you seem to have 2nd level miss about this miss. I'm not the 1st
>>> asking about braces in Python, hundreds of people embraced braces
>>> (sorry for the pun) in Python for decades (references are in other
>>> messages of this thread). Apparently, they forgot to ask for
>>> "acceptance", and accepted it themselves.
>>> 
>>> The problem? There's high duplication of effort in that area, and
>>> the same implementation bugs are repeated again and again. So the
>>> question is whether someone who did it, tried to spec out what they
>>> did, what is the test process, etc.
>>> 
>> 
>> So my question to you is: Why raise all these threads on python-ideas
>> that have approximately zero chance of being accepted into the core
>> language? 
> 
> Simple question, simple answer: majority of stuff posted on
> python-ideas has approximately zero chance of being accepted into the
> core language.
> 
> In this regard, braces aren't worse than average other stuff posted
> here. Actually, it might be a bit more interesting, as it clearly moved
> people throughout the years.

That’s questionable.  The primary reason I’ve seen so far is folks that dislike 
significant whitespace or mis the braces in they had in other languages (to put 
it bluntly). 

But as Chris has noticed there’s about 0 chance that any proposal for adding 
braces as an optional feature will be accepted.  A lot of other proposals also 
have little chance of being accepted, but they do inform development of either 
the language or some library.  In some sense reading about problems folks run 
into with the language are in general more interesting than full formed ideas 
because most of us aren’t very good language designers (and I count myself in 
that category).

> 
>> Why not create a new community of Bracey Python people, and
>> build a language and an ecosystem around that?
>> 
>> Is it because you think that you wouldn't get enough people?
>> Because... that would be a good reason not to do it, and a good reason
>> for the core language to continue to not do it.
> 
> There were good reasons to not have string interpolation in the core
> language for decades then - KABOOM - there's string interpolation. You
> see a pattern yet? No? Oh, let's just keep watching.

I don’t agree, in hindsight there’s a clear path to the introduction of 
f-strings.  There’s also loads of features that have been proposed for a long 
while and never were added to the language, and never will for one reason or 
another. Anyways… That some unrelated feature was accepted is not an argument 
in favour of this feature.

> 
> For everyone else who misses the point: the talk is about *alternative*
> (second) syntax. Nothing happens to the main indent-based syntax. Only
> people who need braces syntax would use it, just as they have been
> doing for decades.

They can continue to use a 3th-party project for that. Having an formal 
alternative syntax at the very least sends out the signal that the language 
designers think that this is a good idea, and from what I’ve read in the past 
that’s not going to happen.

> 
> Whether a particular implementation (it's a common joke on the Python
> lists to mistake a language and a particular implementation) supports
> alternative syntax out of the box is irrelevant. It's no more different
> to having a separate typechecker or a separate script to run venv in a
> subshell (a recent case brought up here on the list).

That folks are mistaken about the distinction between the language and an 
implementation is to be expected, that happens with formally standardised 
languages as well (my code works with compiler X and not with compiler Y, 
therefore compiler Y is broken).

Ronald
—

Twitter / micro.blog: @ronaldoussoren
Blog: https://blog.ronaldoussoren.net/

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