[Python-3000] Support for PEP 3131 (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sun May 13 21:29:23 CEST 2007

On 5/13/07, Collin Winter <collinw at gmail.com> wrote:

Have there been studies on this kind of thing? Has there been any research into whether a mixture of English keywords and, say, Japanese and English identifiers makes a given programming language easier to learn and use? If so, why aren't they referenced in the PEP or linked in any emails? Given the lack of evidence presented so far, my operating assumption is that the PEP's supporters -- including you -- are making things up to support a conclusion that they might wish to be true.

In particular, AFAIK Java has allowed all Unicode letters in identifiers right from the start. I'd like to hear about descriptions of actual user experiences with this feature, in Java or in any other language that supports it. (Are there any others?) That would be far more valuable to me than any continued argumentation for or against the proposal.

I also note that there's no particular reason why this needs to be done exactly in 3.0. It's not backwards incompatible -- it could be done in 2.6 if people really really want it, or it could be introduced in 3.1, 3.2 or whenever the world appears to be ready. I certainly don't consider it an early design mistake to only require ASCII -- at the time it was the only sane thing to do and I'm far from convinced that it needs to change now.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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