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PEP308: Yet another syntax proposal

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Tue Feb 11 20:21:57 EST 2003 
Alexander Schmolck wrote:

> Even with an order of magnitude uncertainty (and I'd think one could
> do
> better), the frequency doesn't look to impressive, does it?

Did you even read what I've said?  The frequency by itself means
_nothing_.  How often are generators used? list comprehensions?
metaclasses?

No one ever said that conditional operators (in any language) were so
ubiquitous that Python _had_ to have them.  Frequency arguments defeat
strawmen.

> Even without bothering to come up with some formal and quantifiable
> criterion
> of expressiveness, couldn't we just reach the consensus that something
> that
> can be trivially and compactly rewritten with existing language
> constructs
> isn't all that expressive?

Right, with idioms that are short, unreadable, and wrong.

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