Steven Bethard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > It's much easier to explain to newcomers that *, + and - work on > True and False as if they were 1 and 0 than it is to introduce them > to a two element boolean algebra.
I've found exactly the opposite. When explaining that None is a value that is not equal to any other, and that is a useful property, I've received little confusion. Whereas when someone discovers that arithmetic works on True and False as if they were numbers, or that they are in fact *equal to* numbers, their function as boolean values is much harder to explain. So, it's for the purposes of explaining True and False to newcomers (let alone keeping things clear when observing a program) that I would welcome True and False as discrete values, so that when those values are produced by an expression or function the result is clearly a boolean value and not a faked one that is "really" an integer. -- \ "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" "Wuh, I think | `\ so, Brain, but wouldn't anything lose its flavor on the bedpost | _o__) overnight?" -- _Pinky and The Brain_ | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
