Inline Conditionals?

[Martin Maney]

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It's not the typo that "becomes proof" (or, rather, indication) of the
> higher readability of sparse expression: it's the fact that so many
> readers noticed it and let me know, privately or publically.  Why do you

Okay, let me unpack the thought more fully (as I should have done since
I was jumping on a weeks-old thread).

There's a recurring argument, seen most often when dissing a usage one
disagrees with (you're not by a long shot the only one who uses this,
BTW).  One grabs typos in ones opponents' examples and construes them
as evidence of the inferiority of whatever it is one dislikes about
their example, usually a stylistic quirk or a proposed change.  This is
a dubious argument on the face of it because it is so clearly
selective: when a typo occurs in a stylistically orthodox chunk of
code, it is nearly always regarde as being just a typo, not evidence of
some deeper problem with the style.  To properly ground this argument
one would need to be an honest statistician and consistently account
for typos in both orthodox and unorthodox code; even then, any imputed
evidence against the unorthodox should account for the natural tendency
to make more errors with the unfamiliar than with the familiar, as well
as the impossibility of testing code (something we are constantly
advised to do, both explicitly and implicitly) that uses features not
currently available in the language.

This new excuse for a typo in well-regarded, orthodox examples seems to
rest upon a similarly weak foundation.  At least I cannot ever recall
seeing anyone who had used the above attack retract it when a dozen of
his comrades turned out to have pointed out the same flaw at about the
same time, but surely that is no less proof of the readability of a
usage that one dislikes than it is on one's favorite tricks, eh?  :-/

Ugh!  That's far more words than this deserves, if not that the dubious
argument is being wielded by someone whose opinions deservedly carry a
lot of weight here.

-- 
People make secure systems insecure because
insecure systems do what people want and
secure systems don't.  -- James Grimmelmann