[James Logajan] > Design mistakes one has made do tend to weigh on one's soul (speaking > from more than two decades of programming experience) so I understand > the primal urge to correct them when one can, and even when one > shouldn't. Is this a case when one shouldn't? That is, is it a specific comment on PEP 260, or just a general venting <wink> here? > So although I'm quite annoyed by all these new-fangled gimmicks being > added to the language (i.e. Python generators being added to solve > California's power problems) I have no problem with xrange being fenced > in. OK. > (I find the very existence of the PEP process somewhat unsettling; > there are now thousands of programmers trying to use the language. Why > burden them with insuring their programs remain compatible with yet- > another-damn-set-of-proposals every year? You can ask the C, C++, Fortran, Perl, COBOL (etc, etc) folks that too, but I suspect it's a rhetorical question. I wish you could ask the Java committee, but they work in secret <wink>. > Or worse: trying to rewrite their code "more elegantly" using all the > latest gimmicks. Use of new features isn't required by Guido, and neither is downloading new releases. If *you* waste your time doing that, we both know it's because you can't resist <0.5 wink>. > ... > Speaking of "generators", I just want to say that I think that > "generator" makes for lousy terminology. A generator, umm, *generates* a sequence of values. It's neither more specific nor more general than that, so we're pretty much limited to vaguely suggestive terms like "generator" and "iterator"; Python already used the latter word for something else. I'd be happy to call them pink flamingos. > If I understand correctly, "generators" are coroutines They're formally semi-coroutines; it's not symmetric. > that have peer-to-peer synchronized messaging (synchronizing and > communicating at the "yield" points). Way too highfalutin' a view. Think of a generator as a resumable function, and you're not missing anything -- not even an implementation subtlety. They *are* resumable functions. A "yield" is just a "return", but with the twist that the function can resume executing after the "yield" again. If you also think of ordinary call/return as a peer-to-peer etc etc, then I suppose you're stuck with that view here too. > To my mind, "generators" does not evoke that image at all. Good, because that image was overblown beyond recognition <wink>. >> although-it-would-be-impolite-to-ask-we-why-still-ship-a-directory- >> full-of-crufty-old-irix5-demos-in-the-std-library<wink>-ly > Perhaps because the Irix community would be quite Irate if they were > removed? Doubt it: the Irix5 library files haven't really been touched since 1993. For several years we've also shipped an Irix6 library with all the same stuff. But I suppose releasing a new OS was a symptom of SGI picking on its users too <wink>.
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