Subject: [Newbie] problem with conditional expression
From: Stavros Macrakis
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:42:15 -0400
On 3/21/07, Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a good example of the general principle I've been pushing:
> attempting to prevent stupidity also prevents cleverness.
This is a long-standing debate in programming language design. Your
(clever!) slogan, which sounds like a choice sound bite from Larry
Wall, the NRA, or Howard Roark, doesn't really contribute to the
debate. Of course we want to be able to extrapolate from known
examples. Of course we don't want to prevent cleverness. That's
elementary. What's harder is to figure out what the appropriate
extrapolation might be. And to figure out what makes sense. Even APL
gives up on trying to interpret *some* character sequences as
meaningful.
-s