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PEP 308: A PEP Writer's Experience

Laura Creighton lac at strakt.com
Sat Feb 8 22:01:58 EST 2003 
> In article <mailman.1044728061.20169.python-list at python.org>,
> Dave Brueck  <dave at pythonapocrypha.com> wrote:
> >On Sat, 8 Feb 2003, Aahz wrote:
> >>
> >> It introduces more parsing overhead in human readability than any change
> >> since list comprehensions, and it introduces more semantic/syntactic
> >> overhead in human readability than generators.  (I'm still deeply unhappy
> >> about losing the fight to add a keyword to the front of generators.)
> >
> >How can you possibly substantiate that statement? There's no metric for
> >"parsing overhead in human readability". I can just as easily say it adds
> >very little overhead because it doesn't overload the meaning of the
> >keywords used.
> 
> Michael Chermside claimed, "Really... there's no new conceptual
> overhead..."  I made a counter-claim.  T'ain't possible to refute
> either.
> -- 
> Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

Actually, we did something like in the early 1980s by giving students
some C programs to read, and some questions to answer afterwards,
online.  We timed how quickly they started answering questions, among
other things.  So you could measure this.  But I don't have access to
a lab set up like this any more.

Laura
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