[Python-Dev] PEP 246, redux (original) (raw)

Carlos Ribeiro carribeiro at gmail.com
Fri Jan 14 11:40:52 CET 2005

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 08:50:27 +0100, Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:

Ooops -- sorry; I wouldn't have imagined Brazilian hits would swamp the google hits to that extent, mostly qualifying post-grad courses and the like... seems to be an idiom there for that.

'Lato sensu' is used to indicate short post-graduate level courses that don't give one any recognized degree such as 'MSc', or 'master'. It's pretty much like a specialization course on some specific area, usually offered by small private universities. It's like a fever around here - everyone does just to add something to the resume - and has spawned a entire branch in the educational industry (and yeah, 'industry' is the best word for it).

Some schools refer to traditional post graduate courses as 'stricto sensu'. I don't have the slightest idea about where they did get this naming from. It's also amazing how many hits you'll get for the wrong spelling: 'latu sensu' & 'strictu sensu', mostly from Brazil, and also from some spanish-speaking countries.

Also, a reflection: taxonomy, the classification of things (living beings, rocks, legal precedents, ...) into categories, is a discipline with many, many centuries of experience behind it. I think it is telling that taxonomists found out they require two kinds of ``inheritance'' to do their job (no doubt there are all kind of nuances, but specialized technical wording exists for two kinds: "strict-sense" and "broad-sense")... they need to be able to assert that "A is a B broadly speaking" (or specifically "strictly speaking") so often that they evolved specific terminology. Let's hope it doesn't take OOP many centuries to accept that both "stricto sensu inheritance" (Liskovianly-correct) AND "lato sensu inheritance" are needed to do our jobs!-)

Good point!

-- Carlos Ribeiro Consultoria em Projetos blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com mail: carribeiro at gmail.com mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com

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