On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 09:13:36 -0600, Thomas Bartkus wrote: > *Is* there a reason why the interpreter couldn't/shouldn't require formal > variable declaration?
You mean, other than the reasons already discussed at length in this thread, not to mention many many others? Your not *liking* the reasons doesn't make them any less the reasons. They may not even be good reasons, nevertheless, there the reasons are. If you're literally asking the question you are asking, re-read this thread more carefully. If you're *really* asking "Give me a reason *I like*", I suggest re-reading Alex's discussion on why maybe Python isn't for everybody. All I know is that I have created large programs and typos like you seem mortally terrified of occur on average about once every *ten modules* or so, and are generally caught even before I write the unit tests. Breaking the language to avoid what *by construction* is demonstrated not be a real problem is... well, I believe Alex covered that, too. Blah blah blah, "what if... what if... what if..." We should concentrate on *real* problems, ones that exist in real code, not ones that mostly exist in wild-eyed prose that consists of predictions of pain and death that conspicuously fail to occur, no matter how many times they are repeated or we are exhorted to heed them or face our doom. (The previous paragraph also describes my root problem with Java's strong typing philosophy; death, doom, and destruction conspicuously fail to occur in Python programs, so why the hell should I listen to the doomsayers after I've already proved them false by extensive personal experience? No amount of prose is going to convince me otherwise, nor quite a lot of the rest of us.) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list