The Martellibot Mark 1 has a completely European flavour to it, and adds a cosmopolitan touch of linguistics to its output, sprinkling foreign language references in. It is similar to the timbot in its overall erudition, but can be distinguished from it by its tendency to indulge in flamewars (which, I believe, it does mostly to convince us it is human).
Steve Holden, 13 Dec 2000
In keeping with the religious nature of the battle-- and religion offers precise terms for degrees of damnation! --I suggest:
struggling -- a supported feature; the initial state of all features; may transition to Anathematized
anathematized -- this feature is now cursed, but is supported; may transition to Condemned or Struggling; intimacy with Anathematized features is perilous
condemned -- a feature scheduled for crucifixion; may transition to Crucified, Anathematized (this transition is called "a pardon"), or Struggling (this transition is called "a miracle"); intimacy with Condemned features is suicidal
crucified -- a feature that is no longer supported; may transition to Resurrected
resurrected -- a once-Crucified feature that is again supported; may transition to Condemned, Anathematized or Struggling; although since Resurrection is a state of grace, there may be no point in human time at which a feature is identifiably Resurrected (i.e., it may *appear*, to the unenlightened, that a feature moved directly from Crucified to Anathematized or Struggling or Condemned -- although saying so out loud is heresy).
Tim Peters, 18 Dec 2000
my-python-code-runs-5x-faster-this-month-thanks-to-dumping-$2K- on-a- new-machine-ly y'rs
Tim Peters, 26 Dec 2000
Really, I should pronounce on that PEP (I don't like it very much but haven't found the right argument to reject it :-) ) so this patch can either go in or be rejected.
GvR, 04 Jan 2001, in a comment on patch #101264
The rest is history: the glory, the fame, the riches, the groupies, the adulation of my peers. We won't mention the financial scandal and subsequent bankruptcy lest it discourage you for no good reason <wink>.
Tim Peters, 14 Jan 2001
If you're using anything besides US-ASCII, I stringly suggest Python 2.0.
Uche Ogbuji (A fortuitous typo?), 29 Jan 2001
"There goes Tim, browsing the Playboy site just for the JavaScript. Honest."
"Well, it's not like they had many floating-point numbers to ogle! I like 'em best when the high-order mantissa bits are all perky and regular, standing straight up, then go monster insane in the low-order bits, so you can't guess *what* bit might come next! Man, that's hot. Top it off with an exponent field with lots of ones, and you don't even need any oil. Can't say I've got a preference for sign bits, though -- zero and one can both be saucy treats. Zero is more of a tease, so I guess it depends on the mood."
Barry Warsaw and Tim Peters, 3 Feb 2001
We were sincerely hoping that the Python core team would teach their employers how to code Python, instead of the other way around...
Pieter Nagel, 5 Feb 2001
This bug fix brought to you by the letters b, c, d, g, h, ... and the reporter Ping.
Jeremy Hylton in a checkin message for Python/compile.c, 12 Feb 2001
"It's in ClassModules.py you dumb f**k - can't you tell by the name?"
"Furthermore, RTFM is much more effective if you do it gently and make them feel nicely embarrassed, rather than having them just say 'well, fuck you too' when reading the first insult, and not learn a thing."
"Thanks. I'll try to keep that in mind the next time I flame myself."
Phlip, following up to a query he'd posted earlier, and Thomas Wouters, 18 Feb 2001
"Also, does the simple algorithm you used in Cyclops have a name?"
"Not officially, but it answers to "hey, dumb-ass!"
Neil Schemenauer, interested in finding strongly connected components in graphs, and Tim Peters, 23 Feb 2001
Make this IDLE version 0.8. (We have to skip 0.7 because that was a CNRI release in a corner of the basement of a government building on a planet circling Aldebaran.)
GvR, in a CVS commit message, 22 Mar 2001
Python: programming the way Guido indented it.
Digital Creations T-shirt slogan at IPC9
Stackless Python: programming the way Guido prevented it.
Christian Tismer's title slide, at IPC9
I don't think we should use rational numbers for money because money isn't rational.
Moshe Zadka, at IPC9
We can't stop people from complaining but we can influence what they complain about.
Tim Peters, at IPC9
Perl is like vise grips. You can do anything with it but it is the wrong tool for every job.
Bruce Eckel, at IPC9
Given the choice between a good text editor and a good source control system, i'll take the source control, and use "cat" to write my code.
Greg Wilson, at IPC9
here's the eff-bot's favourite lambda refactoring rule:
Fredrik Lundh, 01 Apr 2001
The GPL tried to protect the freedom of end-users to modify and redistribute their code. Most people do not believe that this is a legitimate freedom like freedom of speech or assembly but Richard Stallman does. I don't think that there is an argument that that will persuade a person one way or another. If freedoms could be proven, that famous document would probably start: "Not everyone holds these truths to be self-evident, so we've worked up a proof of them as Appendix A."
Paul Prescod, 11 Apr 2001
That is one of the first goals. Also, we want to handle a C++ SAX stream with Python, and vice versa (feed a Python SAX stream into Xalan). Bi-SAXuality, in a sense. :)
Jürgen Hermann, 11 Apr 2001
As you seem totally unwilling or unable to understand that Weltanschauung to any extent, I don't see how you could bring Python any constructive enhancement (except perhaps by some random mechanism akin to monkeys banging away on typewriters until 'Hamlet' comes out, I guess).
Alex Martelli, 17 Apr 2001
"Are we more likely to add different concrete subclasses of Consumable in the future, or different concrete subclasses of Consumer? I suspect the former is more likely."
"With genetic engineering being the latest growth industry, I'm not sure that's true. Although I expect that any new models of cow, etc. will have a backwards compatible food-consumption protocol."
Alex Martelli and Greg Ewing, 19 Apr 2001
This property is called confluence, and the proof is called the Church -Rosser theorem. I'm sure you know this, of course, but somewhere out there there's a college student who is being shocked that CS is actually turning out to be relevant, for sufficiently small values of relevance.
Neelakantan Krishnaswami, 20 Apr 2001
if the style mafia finds out, you may find a badly severed list comprehension in your bed one morning, but I'd say the risk is very low.
Fredrik Lundh, 10 May 2001
1495 is a deservedly unpopular number. After all, Lorenzo de' Medici ("il Magnifico") died in 1492, and Giovanni de' Medici ("dalle Bande Nere") wasn't born until 1498, so 1495 fell right in the middle of a very boring and unusual lull where no really outstanding member of the Medici family (either branch) was around.
Alex Martelli, 24 May 2001
"What do you call the thing that pops up and says `Searching' or something to reassure the user that his computer hasn't crashed and the application is still running?"
"On Windows, that's called 'a miracle'."
Laura Creighton and Tim Peters, 28 May 2001
In general, my conclusion after doing numerical work for a while is that the desire to look at algorithms crucial to your research as black boxes is futile. In the end, I always had to dig into the details of the algorithms because they were either never black-boxable or the black-box versions didn't do a good enough job.
David Ascher, 28 May 2001
"Oh, read all Kahan has written, and if you emerge still thinking you know what you're doing when floating point is involved, you're either Tim Peters, or the world champ of hubris."
"I find it's possible to be both <wink>."
Alex Martelli and Tim Peters, 20 May 2001