Tim Peters wrote: > > (Or are the two goals -- completeness and readability -- > > incompossible, unable to be met at the same time by one document?) > > No, but it's not easy, and it's not necessarily succinct. For an > existence proof, see Guy Steele's "Common Lisp the Language". I > don't think it's a coincidence that Steele worked on the readable "The > Java Language Specification" either, or on the original Scheme spec. > Google should hire him to work on Python docs now ;-)
on the other hand, it's important to realize that the Python audience have changed a lot since Guido wrote the first (carefully crafted, and mostly excellent) version of the language reference. I'm sure Guy could create a document that even a martian could read [1], and I'm pretty sure that we could untangle the huge pile of peep- hole tweaks that the reference has accumulated and get back to some- thing close to Guido's original, but I'm not sure that is what the Python community needs. (my goal is to turn pyref into more of a random-access encyclopedia, and less of an ISO-style "it's all there; just keep reading it over and over again until you get it" specification. it should be possible to link from the tutorial to a reference page without causing brain implosions) </F> 1) see http://pyref.infogami.com/introduction _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
