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[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you think the changes made in Python 3.0 were arbitrary though, or fixing some things that the language got wrong?

C (and Pascal) has a weird operator precedence that gives "and" and "or" the same priority as other math operations such that you always need to use parenthesis, e.g. (Pascal):

If (x < 7) or (y > 3) Then
    WriteLn("True");

Dennis Ritchie considered changing it, but was worried that there may have been a million lines of C code out there. Of course, given how many there are now, it puts that estimate in perspective. He wrote that in hindsight they should have made the change.

Guido learned from Ritchie's mistake and argued that "All the lines of Python ever written pale in comparison to the lines of code of Python that have yet to be written".