[Python-Dev] ACCEPTED: PEP 285 (original) (raw)

David Ascher DavidA@ActiveState.com
Wed, 03 Apr 2002 15:37:55 -0800

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > Despite the negative feedback, I've decided to accept the PEP. The > > most important perceived problem is that newbies tend to write > > > > if x == True: ... > > > > where they should write > > > > if x: ... > > > > I believe this problem should be solved by education (the Zen master > > hits the student on the head with a stick, and the student gets > > enlightenment) rather than by holding back what I believe will be a > > useful feature. > > Would it not be "relatively" easy to add a compiler-time warning for > most uses of this dangerous idiom? I think this would be a job for PyChecker. Neal?

Neal just posted that PyChecker deals with it, which is great, but I don't think that PyChecker is enough - until PyChecker is part of the standard distribution and integrated with e.g. the interactive shell, I think that PyChecker is not likely to be used by novices. And we're talking about novices here, right?

Come to think of it, getting PyChecker integrated w/ the interactive shell would be great! Hard, I suspect, but great!

--david