On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:48:25 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 12:18:59 -0700, John Nagle wrote: > > > No, Python went through the usual design screwups. Look at how > > painful the slow transition to Unicode was, from just "str" to Unicode > > strings, ASCII strings, byte strings, byte arrays, 16 and 31 bit > > character builds, and finally automatic switching between rune widths. > > > Are you suggesting that Guido van Rossum wasn't omniscient back in 1991 > when he first released Python??? OH MY GOD!!! You ought to blog about > this, let the world know!!!!
You are making a strawman out of John's statements: > Python went through the usual design screwups. > [screwup list which perhaps pinche John most] > Each of those reflects a design error in the type system which had to be > corrected. The reasonable interpretation of John's statements is that propriety and even truth is a function of time: It was inappropriate for GvR to have put in unicode in 1990. It was appropriate in 2008. And it was done. You may call that being-human-not-God. I call that being real. To have reality time-invariant, would imply for example that Abraham Lincoln was a racist because he use the word 'negro': (see speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Legal_and_political ) Or that it is ok to do so today. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list