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bug:
An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of hardware, especially one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of feature.
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feature:
An intended property or behaviour (as of a program). Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a misfeature)
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misfeature:
A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature, a misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted (which is quite different from not having thought ahead at all). A misfeature can be a particularly stubborn problem to resolve, because fixing it usually involves a substantial philosophical change to the structure of the system involved.
Many misfeatures (especially in user-interface design) arise because the designers/implementors mistake their personal tastes for laws of nature. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because trade-offs were made whose parameters subsequently change (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it is kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but the original implementors wanted to save directory space and we"re stuck with it for now."
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Does not it seem odd that if a and b are dictionaries, c = a + b does not
result in their union?
Given that the (relatively new) set type in Python, use boolean operators & and | for union and intersection, I'd prefer & to +.
Does it not seem to violate the Principal of Least Astonishment to notice
what print "spam " "eggs"*3 does?
Any language that imposes operator precedence will have unexpected outcomes. That is why I have always liked APL, which has no precedence. Strictly right-to-left evaluation with () to group operations in some other order.
And, surely, you are not suggesting that Python 2.4 represents the zenith of
programming language design?
I certainly hope not. I am merely asserting that there is a design that has evolved over 14 or so years, and that my ability to use a language depends on my learning it rather than expecting it to behave the way I want (expect) it to.
Having worked with APL I am always disappointed that Python does not have native array operations. I 'd like to write [1,2,3] + [2,4,6] and get [3,6,9], and +/[1,2,3] and get 6. Unfortunately Python does not work that way.
Having recently used _javascript_ I find it has features that make some aspects of programming easier than Python!
Incidentally, I've been writing compilers and interpreters since 1968 and have
an EECS degree from MIT, so I do have a clue.
I started studying formal language theory (on my own) in 1972, maintained the APL interpreter in 1975 and devised and helped implement my first language in 1976. My BSEE from RPI predates any CS departments.
phone 510 978 4454
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