6 ms·

[Python-ideas] List Revolution

118 points by telemachos 15y ago

briancurtin 15y ago
First time I've laughed from a Python mailing list in a while.
mattbillenstein 15y ago
That is clearly a freaking insane idea in a language as widely deployed as Python...
- mtogo 15y ago
  It's a joke ;)
  - mattbillenstein 15y ago
    I sincerely hope so -- I looked and it wasn't April fool's day tho...
    - pyre 15y ago
      An overzealous HTML sanitizer probably scrubbed the </sarcasm> tag. ;)
    - emmett 15y ago
      If a 1 offset under the system the guy advocates means what a 0 normally does, that implies that a +1 vote means the same thing as a +0 vote. So Guido is "agreeing" that it deserves +1, but only if you use 1-indexing so +1 is the lowest possible vote.
      - pyre 15y ago
        But +0 isn't the lowest possible vote in the current system... unless you want to claim that -1 is the highest possible vote because it wraps to the top of the scale.
- sp332 15y ago
  Don't worry, it's not going in until version 4, and version 3 isn't even the most common version yet.
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    Is that Python 3 or Python[3]??
makeramen 15y ago
woah. (not to post something useless, but I'm literally speechless going back and forth between "that's so awesome" and "that's so dumb" in my head for so many different reasons) (and at how short and quick Guido's response was, as if it was such an easy decision to make.)
- sgk284 15y ago
  I suspect you're overlooking Guido's sense of humor. He was making a joke with his acceptance of the idea.
  - makeramen 15y ago
    ah ok, not that familiar with Guido, but that makes much more sense haha edit: also found this later in the thread to confirm the humor behind everything: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September/011454.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September...
sixtypoundhound 15y ago
He's joking right - I almost spit out my diet coke... (oh yeah...I'm sure THAT will accelerate my group's upgrade from 2.66....)
pyre 15y ago
Good news! You can have this right now in Perl: $[ = 1; Now all of your arrays are 1-indexed!
- shuzchen 15y ago
  Lua does this already. And that's the part about Lua that I don't like. But that's mostly my personal preference speaking.
- vessenes 15y ago
  I am truly, truly horrified that this a language option in perl, although I'm not surprised. (Well, I did google it to see if you were joking, but you weren't, apparently). The older I get the more Larry Wall strikes me as like a really well intentioned hippy type; when in God's green earth has it been a good idea to allow a five character statement change the truth values of nearly every for loop in a body of code? Perl always claimed it gave you enough rope to hang yourself, but this goes far, far beyond that. This is like building the scaffolding and marking it like "Young developers, play here! Ropes are fun!"
  - irahul 15y ago
    > I am truly, truly horrified that this a language option in perl, although I'm not surprised. How about this in C(and thousand others): #define if while I am pretty sure I can find something to horrify you in almost any language.
    - pyre 15y ago
      Or more subtly: #define break continue Or Ruby: irb(main):001:0> if 0 irb(main):002:1> print "True!" irb(main):003:1> end True!=> nil (Though the Ruby example probably not as horrific as the others)
      - rat 15y ago
        true the ruby should be a type error
drivebyacct2 15y ago
I hope it's obvious that it's a joke, but was the question serious is my concern.
tkaemming 15y ago
The Dijkstra transcript referred to a bit deeper in the thread about why sequence numbering starts at zero is a tangentially interesting read: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EW...
- jemfinch 15y ago
  I specifically paged through the read to make sure that link had been given, and then came to this comment page to do the same thing. Few people seem to know that we have real and valid reasons for indexing from 0 instead of 1.
  - sid6376 15y ago
    Apologies if this appears dumb. After going through the link I still could not understand why is it ok to exclude the upper bound while including the lower bound? Is it because the lower bound is fixed as 0 is the smallest natural number? Or is there some other reason.
    - ColinWright 15y ago
      Dijkstra explains it pretty clearly - there are two main reasons. The first is so that the number of elements in the array/list/vector/collection is given by upper-lower. The second is so that successive intervals re-use the same number, the upper bound of one becoming the lower bound of the next. This is python we can have: L[:3], L[3:6], L[6:23], L[23:40], L[40:] With the repeated numbers we know that all elements of L have been included. Further, we know that given: L[start:end] ... then (provided L had at least "end" elements to start with) the resulting length is end-start. If you included the end point then the length would be end-start+1 which is fertile ground for fence-post errors.
      - sid6376 15y ago
        Thanks for the explanation.
gtklocker 15y ago
I don't want to live in this planet anymore.
LeafStorm 15y ago
Roberto Ierusalimschy has an interesting perspective on the zero vs. one concept: "Because people count from one, not zero. We do that in kindergarten, in music, when starting a race, when drawing up an agenda, everywhere. One, two, three, etc have their counterparts in every known language on earth. Zero, on the other hand, is an advanced concept. Humanity could prove that sqrt(2) is not a rational number centuries before anybody thought that a symbol for zero might be useful. A harder question would be "why do arrays in some other languages count from zero not one?" The answer for C is a good one: "so that * (A+k) and A[k] mean the same". For Python, the answer seems to be "because it's that way in C"." And: "Currently, many languages are 0-based due to influence from C. Ironically, none of them share the reason that made C 0-based (where a[e] means * (a+e))." (EDIT: I had to add spaces after the stars to prevent HN from italicizing a huge block of text.
- oxtopus 15y ago
  Meanwhile, some people do count up from zero. At least in numbering floors in a building. I know in Europe and other parts of the world the ground floor is the zeroth floor, and it goes up from there.
  - LeafStorm 15y ago
    Yeah, a lot of the buildings at my university are numbered that way. But not even in Europe would one count a stack of paper as "zero, one, two, three..."
  - dkersten 15y ago
    Numerically, yes, but nobody calls it a "zeroth" floor. Rather, its "ground", "first", "second" (or G, 1, 2, 3...) so while ground is equivalent to zero, nobody actually says (or thinks) zero. At least, nowhere I've been.
    - inportb 15y ago
      So let's just call it the "ground" index. G = ground = 0; A[G], A[1], A[2], ...
par 15y ago
The benevolent dictator for life has spoken!
famousactress 15y ago
Guido admits this is a joke later in the thread: (And to those taking the thread seriously: this is all in jest. We won't change the indexing base. The idea is so preposterous that the only kind of response possible is to laugh with it.) --Guido http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September/011462.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September...
- deleted 15y ago
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- deleted 15y ago
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sagarun 15y ago
Well, given Guido's endorsement, I think we need to change how these +1/-1 votes work. Clearly, +1 means what +0 used to mean. So you have to say +2 to vote in favor of something and -0 to vote against. I know it will be confusing during the transition period but it will be so much easier to use when we are done. Loved this response http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September/011454.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September...

118 points by telemachos 15y ago

briancurtin 15y ago

First time I've laughed from a Python mailing list in a while.

mattbillenstein 15y ago

That is clearly a freaking insane idea in a language as widely deployed as Python...

mtogo 15y ago
It's a joke ;)
- mattbillenstein 15y ago
  I sincerely hope so -- I looked and it wasn't April fool's day tho...
  - pyre 15y ago
    An overzealous HTML sanitizer probably scrubbed the </sarcasm> tag. ;)
  - emmett 15y ago
    If a 1 offset under the system the guy advocates means what a 0 normally does, that implies that a +1 vote means the same thing as a +0 vote. So Guido is "agreeing" that it deserves +1, but only if you use 1-indexing so +1 is the lowest possible vote.
    - pyre 15y ago
      But +0 isn't the lowest possible vote in the current system... unless you want to claim that -1 is the highest possible vote because it wraps to the top of the scale.
sp332 15y ago
Don't worry, it's not going in until version 4, and version 3 isn't even the most common version yet.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  Is that Python 3 or Python[3]??

makeramen 15y ago

woah. (not to post something useless, but I'm literally speechless going back and forth between "that's so awesome" and "that's so dumb" in my head for so many different reasons) (and at how short and quick Guido's response was, as if it was such an easy decision to make.)

sgk284 15y ago
I suspect you're overlooking Guido's sense of humor. He was making a joke with his acceptance of the idea.
- makeramen 15y ago
  ah ok, not that familiar with Guido, but that makes much more sense haha edit: also found this later in the thread to confirm the humor behind everything: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September/011454.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September...

sixtypoundhound 15y ago

He's joking right - I almost spit out my diet coke... (oh yeah...I'm sure THAT will accelerate my group's upgrade from 2.66....)

pyre 15y ago

Good news! You can have this right now in Perl: $[ = 1; Now all of your arrays are 1-indexed!

shuzchen 15y ago
Lua does this already. And that's the part about Lua that I don't like. But that's mostly my personal preference speaking.
vessenes 15y ago
I am truly, truly horrified that this a language option in perl, although I'm not surprised. (Well, I did google it to see if you were joking, but you weren't, apparently). The older I get the more Larry Wall strikes me as like a really well intentioned hippy type; when in God's green earth has it been a good idea to allow a five character statement change the truth values of nearly every for loop in a body of code? Perl always claimed it gave you enough rope to hang yourself, but this goes far, far beyond that. This is like building the scaffolding and marking it like "Young developers, play here! Ropes are fun!"
- irahul 15y ago
  > I am truly, truly horrified that this a language option in perl, although I'm not surprised. How about this in C(and thousand others): #define if while I am pretty sure I can find something to horrify you in almost any language.
  - pyre 15y ago
    Or more subtly: #define break continue Or Ruby: irb(main):001:0> if 0 irb(main):002:1> print "True!" irb(main):003:1> end True!=> nil (Though the Ruby example probably not as horrific as the others)
    - rat 15y ago
      true the ruby should be a type error

drivebyacct2 15y ago

I hope it's obvious that it's a joke, but was the question serious is my concern.

tkaemming 15y ago

The Dijkstra transcript referred to a bit deeper in the thread about why sequence numbering starts at zero is a tangentially interesting read: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EW...

jemfinch 15y ago
I specifically paged through the read to make sure that link had been given, and then came to this comment page to do the same thing. Few people seem to know that we have real and valid reasons for indexing from 0 instead of 1.
- sid6376 15y ago
  Apologies if this appears dumb. After going through the link I still could not understand why is it ok to exclude the upper bound while including the lower bound? Is it because the lower bound is fixed as 0 is the smallest natural number? Or is there some other reason.
  - ColinWright 15y ago
    Dijkstra explains it pretty clearly - there are two main reasons. The first is so that the number of elements in the array/list/vector/collection is given by upper-lower. The second is so that successive intervals re-use the same number, the upper bound of one becoming the lower bound of the next. This is python we can have: L[:3], L[3:6], L[6:23], L[23:40], L[40:] With the repeated numbers we know that all elements of L have been included. Further, we know that given: L[start:end] ... then (provided L had at least "end" elements to start with) the resulting length is end-start. If you included the end point then the length would be end-start+1 which is fertile ground for fence-post errors.
    - sid6376 15y ago
      Thanks for the explanation.

gtklocker 15y ago

I don't want to live in this planet anymore.

LeafStorm 15y ago

Roberto Ierusalimschy has an interesting perspective on the zero vs. one concept: "Because people count from one, not zero. We do that in kindergarten, in music, when starting a race, when drawing up an agenda, everywhere. One, two, three, etc have their counterparts in every known language on earth. Zero, on the other hand, is an advanced concept. Humanity could prove that sqrt(2) is not a rational number centuries before anybody thought that a symbol for zero might be useful. A harder question would be "why do arrays in some other languages count from zero not one?" The answer for C is a good one: "so that * (A+k) and A[k] mean the same". For Python, the answer seems to be "because it's that way in C"." And: "Currently, many languages are 0-based due to influence from C. Ironically, none of them share the reason that made C 0-based (where a[e] means * (a+e))." (EDIT: I had to add spaces after the stars to prevent HN from italicizing a huge block of text.

oxtopus 15y ago
Meanwhile, some people do count up from zero. At least in numbering floors in a building. I know in Europe and other parts of the world the ground floor is the zeroth floor, and it goes up from there.
- LeafStorm 15y ago
  Yeah, a lot of the buildings at my university are numbered that way. But not even in Europe would one count a stack of paper as "zero, one, two, three..."
- dkersten 15y ago
  Numerically, yes, but nobody calls it a "zeroth" floor. Rather, its "ground", "first", "second" (or G, 1, 2, 3...) so while ground is equivalent to zero, nobody actually says (or thinks) zero. At least, nowhere I've been.
  - inportb 15y ago
    So let's just call it the "ground" index. G = ground = 0; A[G], A[1], A[2], ...

par 15y ago

The benevolent dictator for life has spoken!

famousactress 15y ago

Guido admits this is a joke later in the thread: (And to those taking the thread seriously: this is all in jest. We won't change the indexing base. The idea is so preposterous that the only kind of response possible is to laugh with it.) --Guido http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September/011462.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September...

deleted 15y ago
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sagarun 15y ago

Well, given Guido's endorsement, I think we need to change how these +1/-1 votes work. Clearly, +1 means what +0 used to mean. So you have to say +2 to vote in favor of something and -0 to vote against. I know it will be confusing during the transition period but it will be so much easier to use when we are done. Loved this response http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September/011454.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2011-September...