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Acrimony in c.l.p.

dsavitsk dsavitsk at e-coli.net
Mon Dec 23 01:57:24 EST 2002 
"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.1040612623.24564.python-list at python.org...
> [Terry Hancock]
> >> Python, I find, is> consistently frustrating to any such impulses
> >> I might have.  Most newbies can figure out even fairly clever code
> >> by reading the source alone.  There are exceptions, but, IMHO, not
> >> as many.
>
> [dsavitsk]
> > This seems to me to be a bit of a myth which was more true in 1.5.2
> > days.
>
> I don't think so.  If, for example, you dig into the actual archives, even
> in Python 1.0 days you're sure to find threads between me and Steven
> Majewski that even today nobody else would understand.

Point taken. However, I suppose I am meaning something shallower.  For
example, writing

>>> l = [i for i in range(10)]

instead of

>>> l = []
>>> for i in range(10):
...     l.append(i)

is less readable, imo, to a newbie.  I don't think this is either a negative
or a positive, or an encouragement to use one syntax over another, but
simply an observation that one seems more readable to someone just starting.

Certainly 1.5.2 features would be more difficult to understand than 1.4,
which would be in turn more difficult to read than 1.0 (or indeed 0.9.6).
All this is is an observation that languages tend toward complexity, Python
included (I asked a linguist who says that, indeed, often in language
irregular forms are not just tolerated and preserved, but are in fact
favored).

* * *

> Here's the plan:  When someone uses a feature you don't understand, simply
> shoot them.  This is easier than learning something new, and before too
long
> the only living coders will be writing in an easily understood, tiny
subset
> of Python 0.9.6 <wink>.

again, I think my observation was simply positive and not normative. I am
certainly not opposed to new things going in, particularly when they don't
break old things :-)

-d
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