[Python-Dev] Re: Source-level backward compatibility requirements -logging and apply() (original) (raw)

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Tue Dec 9 12:29:45 EST 2003

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Fredrik

in my experience, you always lose your audience when you introduce the callable(*args, **kwargs) syntax, and you don't get them back until you explain that the notion is apply(callable, args, kwargs). Maybe it depends on the audience? In my experience (admitted it was a while ago), the desire to call a function with arguments that are already given as an array often comes to relative newbies who've never heard of apply in any other language (isn't it a Lisp thing?).

There's also the issue that IME teaching apply() usually comes after teaching

def foo(*args, **kwargs):

which makes the symmetry easier to understand, IMO.

Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

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