[Python-3000] how to deal with compatibility problems (example: turtle module)

Wed May 28 00:34:11 CEST 2008

In the light of that, I'm not opposed to relaxing the 100%
compatibility requirement.
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Gregor Lingl <gregor.lingl at aon.at> wrote:
>>> Guido van Rossum schrieb:
>>>> The old turtle.py explicitly says
>>>> from math import * # Also for export
>>>> so I think it's desirable to keep this behavior. My intent with that
>> line was that an absolute beginner could put "from turtle import *" in
>> their interactive session and be able to use both the turtle code and
>> the high-school math functions that might come in handy, like sin()
>> and cos(). The other math functions don' really hurt I believe. Where
>> there's a naming conflict, obviously the turtle module wins.
>>>> --Guido
>>>> Thanks for the quick reply, I'll do it this way.
>> Gregor
>> P.S.: I'd just like to add one (critical) remark which results from some
> decades working as a highschool teacher and (nearly) one decade working
> with Python, and especially turtle graphics with highschool students:
>> sin() and cos() imported from math work with radians. The default
> angle-mode for turtle is degrees. So when using trig-functions I have
> to talk about radian measure and conversion of angle units. To calculate
> the sine of 30 degrees for instance I had to call sin(radians(30)) etc.,
> but unfortunately just this radians() functions is not available anymore
> when doing from turtle import *. So in this case this import is of limited
> use. And it definitely makes sense to tell highschool students that
> sin(), cos() and friends live in a module called math.
>>>>
-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)