[Python-ideas] Interrupting threads (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Jan 29 17:41:09 CET 2013

On 1/29/2013 4:54 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

Le Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:23:33 +0100, Charles-François Natali <cf.natali at gmail.com> a écrit :

- Really, "heed"? I've never had to look up a word in a dictionary while reading a technical book/presentation/discussion before. I may not be particularly good in English, but I'm positive this term will puzzle many non native speakers... Ditto here. Now it's not unusual to have to learn new vocabulary, but "heed" is obscure and makes an API difficult to understand for me.

As a native American English speaker, 'heed' is not obscure. Heeding (paying close attention to) things such as the warnings in our fine manual may be out of style among gung-ho programmers, but I hope it is not archaic;-). That said, I can imagine that 'heed' falls below the threshhold of usage frequency for words taught abroad.

Of course, I sympathize with native English speakers who are annoyed by the prevalence of Globish over real English.That said, Python already mandates American English instead of British English.

Heeding warning may be 'old-fashioned', but that does not make it British.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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