Eight Python warts

I love Python, but a few things still bug me about it. I’ve bashed on several other technologies; here’s some Python bashing. In no particular order:

len() should be a method on collections, not a built-in.
The GIL sucks, and it’s going to get suckier until someone fixes it, and that will be hard.
(Mutable) default arguments are shared across function invocations: def foo(bar=[]). This one nails newbies all the time.
(1) != (1,) — the first is an integer, and the second a singleton tuple.
2**29 in xrange(2**30) should return instantly, like it does in Ruby, rather than iterating up to 2**29. In other words, range objects should have basic knowledge of their endpoints.
Decorator syntax is ugly and un-Pythonic. If I wanted @ signs all over my code I would be using Perl.
No support for labeled break and continue. I continue to respectfully disagree with the rejection of my PEP.
There’s a copy() method on the mutable dict and set types, but not one on list — the best solution is to write foo[:], which is cryptic at best.

Update: This has started a pretty good discussion on Reddit. Many people correctly guessed that I’m using singleton in the mathematical sense, not in the sense of the programming pattern. The comments from Cairnarvon and tghw are particularly worth reading.

Interface scope

Ryan Singer makes explicit what interface designers have known intuitively for a long time: just like languages (both natural and artificial), interface widgets have scope.

Goodbye, Number Six

Patrick McGoohan died today. He’s best known for creating The Prisoner, possibly the only time a single person has been given carte blanche to write, direct, and star in a television program. It remains among the finest stories ever told. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out.

Twitter and TechCrunch, sittin’ in a tree

I’m not at all suprised at Michael‘s discovery that when TechCrunch Says Jump, Twitterers Say How High?

Who’s Number Two

I think I’ve finally figured out who Number Two is:

From a BBC 2 trailer in one of the the extras on Doctor Who and the Silurians (Amazon).

P.S. If this makes no sense to you, you must not be a fan of 1970s British sci-fi. If not, we can still be friends.

All percentages might be created equal…

…but why you should support Mac OS X and Linux makes the case that some percentages are more valuable than others.

I think the reason is even simpler: Windows computers are far more likely than Macs to belong to people who just don’t want or need computers, and to sit largely disused in a corner. (And pretty much everyone running Linux is a power user to begin with.)

Electronic voting v.s. electronic gambling

This is a pretty telling comparison between electronic gambling and electronic voting machines.

From The Washington Post via Schneier on Security.

Ubuntu patch o’ the month

Worth it for the title alone: Patch: Ubuntu DRBD now can haz run after boot.

Computer architecture as business practice

David Dalrymple gives an amusing and thought-provoking critique of computer architecture over at Edge‘s World Question Center:

Imagine if your company or organization had one fellow [the CPU] who sat in an isolated office, and refused to talk with anyone except his two most trusted deputies [the Northbridge and Southbridge], through which all the actual work the company does must be funneled. Because this one man — let’s call him Bob — is so overloaded doing all the work of the entire company, he has several assistants [memory controllers] who remember everything for him. They do this through a complex system [virtual memory] of file cabinets of various sizes [physical memories], the organization over which they have strictly limited autonomy.

How to avoid sounding like a total asshole when talking about the internet, even though you actually have no idea how it works

Alternate title: I know it’s time to get out of the house when I start exercising my license to practice linguistics.

The mainstream media and people who are not internet-savvy have radically different uses of the verbs log in, log on, click on, download and upload.

The common, internet-savvy definitions for log in/on and click on are:

log in, log on: to identify yourself and gain access to a resource on a computer by providing authenticating information.

click on: to press the mouse button down and then release it, while the mouse pointer is over a visible link, menu item, or icon or other resource on the computer screen.

The non-internet-savvy use appears to simply be shorthand for the verb go or visit. For example, an announcer on the evening news might say:¹

For more details on this story, log on to our website at www….

No identifying information is needed to allow access to the news’ website; the intended meaning is simply to visit. The particle constructions click on and click on to also are occasionally also used with this same intended meaning:

For more details on this story, click on to our website at www….

For more details on this story, click on our website at www….

The news announcer wouldn’t be reading out the website address unless the listener needed to type it in first. Since the address isn’t going to be visible on the listener’s screen until they type it in, there’s nothing to click on. And once the listener is finished typing it in, they’ll be automatically taken to the site when they push enter. And in no modern browser is the website address ever clickable. So this usage of click on has the meaning of go or visit as well.

The internet-savvy uses of download and upload are deictic, like the verbs send and recieve, or come and go. That is, their meaning is dependent on the location of the agent performing the action:

download: to cause electronic data, files, or other information to move towards the agent, generally over a network.

upload: to cause electronic data, files, or other information to move away from the agent, generally over a network.

For example, consider two people, Alice and Bob. Alice is working from home and Bob is at the office. If Alice is going to transfer a file from her computer at home to a computer at office, where Bob is, they would both use upload, because the data is moving away from the agent, Alice:

Bob: Can you upload today’s TPS reports?

Alice: Sure. I’ll let you know when they’re done uploading.

Download in place of upload would mean that the TPS reports² were on the computer at the office, and Alice was transferring them to her computer at home:

Bob: Can you download today’s TPS reports?

Alice: Sure. I’ll let you know when they’re done downloading.

Similarly, if Bob were the one initiating the action of obtaining the information from Alice’s computer, he would use download, and if he were sending the information to Alice’s computer, he would use upload.³

The non-internet-savvy usage of download simply means transfer. It has no deictic component and encompasses the net-savvy meaning of upload and download, as well as that of simple copying:

Once this file is finished downloading to my Hotmail I’ll download it to you in an email.

I downloaded the photos from the CD to my computer and now they won’t load.

Unsurprisingly, upload does not seem to be present in the non-internet-savvy dialect; possibly because download encompasses its meaning entirely.

Although there are probably more differently-used terms, these four usage differences are more than enough for internet-savvy speakers to identify non-internet-savvy speakers. Generally the internet-savvy speakers then make the same kind of assumptions that adults make about children who mimic and misuse words they’ve just learned — specifically, that the speaker has no idea what the words he or she is using actually mean, and therefore no idea what he or she is talking about.

Sounding internet-savvy is easy; then, even if you’re not. Use visit instead of log in/log on when the user doesn’t actually have to identify themselves to use a website or other resource. Don’t use click on unless there’s actually something to click on. And think about where the data is going and who’s making it go there before choosing between upload and download. Before you know it, people will start asking you for help debugging their IPv6 firewall rules and recompiling their embedded Linux kernels.⁴

That’s right, Fox News: read up and find out how real live internet users talk about it. [↩]
The type of report is irrelevant to these examples. [↩]
Unless, of course, Bob or Alice were downloading something illegal with BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer software, in which case they would say something like: d00d eye m d0wnlo4d1n9 t|-|is t0rr3nt @ th3 k-rad sp33d of 7.3KB/s!!!1!!1! [↩]
Don’t actually help them do these things, though. You might break something. [↩]

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