Re: Python History

Paul Prescod wrote:

> Christian Tismer wrote:
> 
>> ...
>>
>> Python is suffering from a slightly too simple model from the
>> early days, which is repaired today by rather complicated
>> and really clever constructs. Guido (without offending him),
>> half-heartedly added classes in the simplest way he could
>> think of, to shut up people crying for classes, and this
>> was quite fine at that time.
> 
> 
> I just want to make a small point about history. You hear this floating 
> around the Internet that Python originally did not have classes. I am 
> quite confident that the very first version of Python to be released to 
> the Internet had classes.

This is correct.
Classobject.c was initially released on 1990/10/14, earlier than
the initial ceval.c, which is from 1990/11/18.
Python 1.0 was to my knowledge released on 1994/1/4.
The python-list archives don't reach back beyond 1996.

So I probably have to correct myself and claim that claases
where half-heartedly added from the beginning. I can't remember
where my feeling stems from, maybe it was private conversation.
I have asked Guido in another email. I don't want to do wrong
claims.

> Furthermore, in the early 90s it was not 
> normal for a scripting language to have classes. Perl 4 did not. Awk and 
> sh did not. REXX did not (Object REXX came later). I believe Python was 
> the first language to be labelled both "scripting language" and "OOP 
> language". I surmise that this was Guido's plan from the beginning and 
> not something he was pressured into.

I'm eager to find out. I have no idea how I got to this impression.
It is deeply inside me, but I can't prove it to myself.

> You can see to an extent that "object" thinking goes deep into Python 
> because lists always had methods.

Sure for object thinking, not sure for class thinking.

Let's wait for the master, I don't know -- chris

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