[Python-Dev] Half-baked proposal: * (and **?) in assignments (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon bac@OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Sat, 23 Nov 2002 16:37:09 -0800 (PST)

[Delaney, Timothy]

I think the addition of this would lead to a more functional style of programming. This may be a plus for some people, and a minus for others.

MINUS!

And yes, I have done my fair share of Scheme and Lisp programming so this is not an ignorant statement. Python is not a functional language, nor do I personally want to see it go in that direction. Guido has said before that he regrets including lambda, map and the other built-in methods that come from the functional world (read his "Python Regrets" presentation from OSCON 2002).

But I am sure there are people out there who disagree with my view. =) So I am still going to hold as my main argument that it does not promote concise code and I want to keep the LHS of the assignment simple. But then again that might be a bias coming from a right-handed person. =)

-Brett