Re: Re: Re: Re[2]: Re: class proposal

Lenard Lindstrom wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 02:31:15 +0200 Christian Tismer <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Replying on an old topic, just by chance...
>>
>>Lenard Lindstrom wrote:
>>
>>...
>>
>>
>>>What I dislike about Python:
>>>
>>>1) Case sensitive identifiers. This is a C holdover. Many high level languages
>>>   - Pascal, Ada, PL/I - are case insensitive. Why not Prothon? Just rename
>>>   Object to root to remove the conflict with the object statement.
>>
>>This is not a trivial subject. I have my personal preferences,
>>and I guess for 10 users, there are 15 preferences.

[me, proposing auto-correction]

> I checked out Visual Basic for Applications to see what it does. The editor in
> Microsoft Word lets you type an identifier in any case and changes it to the
> VB casing standard on the fly.

Yes, this is something I found quite nice with Visual Studio.

>>>3) The inequality operator != . Lets either adopt Pascal's <> for not equal and :=
>>>   for assignment, or C's &&, ||, and !.
>>
>>Not understood. "!=" is in C as "&&", "||" et al. are.
>>What is the problem?
>>
> 
> It is fine since we are all C programmers. But forget that you know C for a moment.
> The ! as "not" is not obvious. The fact is when I first started using Python and
> saw "!=" I also expected "&&" and "||". Guess what? They were not there. Instead
> there was "and" and "or", just like Pascal.

Ahh, I see. Yes, I remember that I found this counterintuitive
as well. Long ago... :-)
The similarity to C is not complete and half-hearted.
Well, if you know that Guido comes from Algol 60 and
later C, you can find the traces of these languages all over
the place.

> In the context of Python "!=" is just silly.

Yes. But did you recognize that "<>" exists, too?
I think "!=" is just a historical thing. Well,
the existence of "==" is C style, "<>" is pascal style,
probably the existence of "==" makes it hard to
please everybody at all.

 > And in Prothon the "!" or bang symbol has a meaning: change an
 > object in place and return it. Have you notices the
 > append! for lists, etc.

Yes, sure. It may make sense, but it is really ugly for me.
Another thing I might put into an editor: Hide or unhide
the decoration characters. They could show up as colors.
I'd extend my proposal to also disallow coexistence
of the decorated with the undecorated version. Ahem :-)

> But "!=" is not an issue worth getting worked up over. I accept what I am given.
> 
> Anyways, I was only half serious on any of these proposals. I don't consider them
> real problems with Python. But since Prothon is starting over why not bring them
> up just to see what is possible.

Sure.

ciao - chris
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