[lou1306]

The shift towards // vs / also shows great acumen by the Python designers: they tried (and arguably, largely succeeded) in catering to the greater data science/statistics/numerical analysis communities, where 1/2=0.5 is obvious, rather than sticking to the "compsci-obvious" 1/2=0.

[crabbone]

Neither is obvious in either community...

And this isn't the reason Python succeeded. Nor is this the reason for the particular change.

The reason Python succeeded with data-science is NumPy and related group of libraries. They happened to be the first to offer easy access to R-like features of other statistically-flavored languages in an all-purpose language. I.e. it makes it easy to combine general-purpose code with statistics-specific code, and once it accumulated critical mass, the process became self-sustaining and alternatives died off quickly.

The reason for most of the changes that happened to Python in the last fifteen or so years is design driven by fashion. Which means the majority decides what to do with the language. Which also means that Python is made to look more and more like other mainstream languages (eg. Java, JavaScript, C++...) So, a lot of changes, this one included were made out of subconscious fear of non-conformity.

[lou1306]

Surely 1/2 = 0.5 is what a statistician would expect? Whereas 1/2 = 0 is what happens in C, C++, Ruby, Java, C#, F#, Rust... Essentially most of the popular programming languages with the exception of Python and JS/Typescript.

Anyway. Maybe my original comment was poorly phrased, but I was not implying that Python succeeded because of this form of catering. Rather, the designers took note of Python becoming popular in that field and made changes (see also the matrix multiplication operator @) that accommodate those users rather than the more "typical" CompSci crowd.

[crabbone]

My wife's mom is a statistician (and has been since like 70's). She also used to do a lot of programming in the line of her work (working for a telco, and later as biostatistician), in the latest iteration in R, where things are like you expect them to be. But, before then it was also Matlab, where 1 / 2 = 0.

But, none of that is really relevant. Both operations are useful and common in statistics. Which one is more common will depend on your domain.

> the designers took note of Python [...] made changes

That's putting too much faith in designers of Python. Even calling these people "designers" is giving them too much credit. By their own admission they don't have any sort of vision or strategy for how to deal with the language, they just add random stuff and see if a lot of people complain or thank them.

In other words, matrix multiplication operator is there not because there was some kind of intention or design on the part of the small group of people who are responsible for releasing the language, it was more of a "genetic algorithm" kind of thing: change - iterate - see if change optimizes some metric - repeat.