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> Python's goal that "there should be one obvious way to do anything" is admirable, but doesn't seem like it's lived up to in any way. I don't think that was e
by Scarblac 5y ago
> Python's goal that "there should be one obvious way to do anything" is admirable, but doesn't seem like it's lived up to in any way.
I don't think that was ever a serious goal, it's just that initially Python competed with Perl, and Perl's slogan was "There's More Than One Way To Do It". Python didn't have as many different ways of doing the same thing in the language itself, and Python people liked that, so its slogan became the opposite.
Since Python 2 and 3 there are already far more different ways to do things in the language (like several ways of string formatting, etc) so it's more of a historical thing. And it was never the case for tooling.
- lmm 5y agoThis is rewriting history. It was a serious goal at the time, and the language was all the better for it; the fact that it wasn't applied to tooling is the language's gravest mistake.
- Scarblac 5y agoMaybe, but I have trouble thinking of a Python language decision that was made (or not made) because there should be a single way to do things. Can you think of one?
- lmm 5y agoPushing map/reduce/filter behind an import was done on the grounds that list comprehensions were the preferred way to express the same things.