[lug] Running a mixed Python environment

[Steve Litt]

Jeffrey,

I agree with you that humans are better than indenting than bracing (or
begin ending). Python is much more readable than C, Perl, Lua or Ruby.

Another good thing about indent-based namespaces or whatever you call
the Python way is that it forever ends all those brace placement wars
as enumerated in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentation_style#Styles
. At Santa Monica Community College I learned the Whitesmith Style and
used it on everything, but when one of my buddies was briefly
co-developer on my UMENU software (Perl, back then), he'd always
convert my Whitesmith style to his favorite, OTBS style. Then I'd
convert his back.

Ultimately, because Vim defaults to OTBS, I started using OTBS
everywhere. The point is, when braces are involved, reading somebody
else's code can look like gibberish, or at least require significant
thought. Python removes the braces, thus removing some confusion.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive


On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 07:58:19 -0600
"Jeffrey S. Haemer" <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jed,
> 
> My first UNIX (as it used to be spelled) job was in late 1983, at the
> Estes Park office of INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation. I got to work
> with Dave Taenzer for Ned Irons, an unstoppable language tinkerer.
> The language Ned had invented, to make little applications for his
> User Interface Management System, TEN/PLUS, had significant
> whitespace, just like Python.
> 
> The programmers (as we used to call ourselves) in the other ISC
> offices all hated it because of that.
> 
> I still think they were, arguably, wrong. Some time around 1982, I
> read a study in SIGPLAN notices, a now-defunct pub of the ACM, by
> someone who'd hunted through huge bodies of code (FORTRAN? PL/1?
> PASCAL? I forget.) for cases where indentation didn't match
> control-flow.  In almost every case, the indentation was right, the
> bracing/keywords/whatever, wrong.
> 
> Humans are better at indenting than bracing.
> 
> Ned just took that and ran with it. So, eventually, did Guido.
> 
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 7:17 AM Jed S. Baer <blug at jbaer.cotse.net>
> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 07:10:26 -0600
> > Jeffrey S. Haemer wrote:
> >  
> > > *The
> > > Unix-Haters Handbook
> > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unix-Haters_Handbook>* said
> > > "using  
> > tabs  
> > > as part of the syntax is like one of those pungee stick traps in
> > > *The Green Berets*  
> >
> > My initial reaction to having whitespace be significant, in Python,
> > was along those lines. :)
> >
> > --
> > All operating systems suck, but Linux just sucks less
> >  - Linus Torvalds
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> 
>