Regarding coding style

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-03-09, Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:

>> The only times I can recall printing source were in college
>> classes where I was required to hand in a hardcopy with the
>> assignment and code samples for job interviews.  In the real
>> world the code base tends to be too huge to contemplate
>> printing...
>
> You've never (say) printed out the source code to one of the
> modules in the Python standard library to read and study?

Nope.  Can't say that I have.  I can't really recall printing
out a source file in the past 10-15 years.

> If your code base is so huge that you can't print out any
> meaningful piece, then you desperately need more
> encapsulation.

>> Even in the early 1990s the moral equivalent of enscript (I think it was
>> a2ps) worked just fine for printing with filenames, line/page numbers,
>> and other niceties no matter what editor you used.  It seems more
>> reasonable to mandate using a sane print tool for the odd case where
>> someone wants to print things out than to mandate cluttering up every
>> file with the filename in a comment.
>
> Sure, but really, adding ONE LINE to the start of a file is
> hardly "cluttering up" anything. Especially if it is in the
> doc string, like this:
>
> """widgets.py: create, manage and destroy widgets.
>
> blah blah blah blah..."""

The bad part is that it's redundant information. That means
that eventually, it's going to be wrong.

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