allow line break at operators

[Seebs]

On 2011-08-12, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> writes:
>> I am pretty sure Python is a pretty nice language. However, the
>> indentation thing has screwed me a few times. Furthermore, I know
>> people who like Python a great deal and acknowledge, without much
>> difficulty, that the indentation thing has caused problems or
>> incompatibilities for them.

> Yes. It's caused problems for me too, so I'm not going to deny that.

> This is different from saying ???indentation as block structure??? is a
> problem; that statement is what I disagree with, and what I think most
> respondents who disagree with you are objecting to.

See below; I think I agree with what I meant by it, and disagree with what
you seem to interpret it as.  Your interpretation makes as much sense as mine,
so far as I can tell.

> I don't see anyone making the denials you're referring to there. If I
> did, you would have my support in considering those denials mistaken.

I suspect, thinking about it more, that it's a communications problem.

> Likewise, ???end of line as end of statement??? has caused me and many
> others problems. I'd go so far as to say that any Python programmer for
> whom that's not true has not done any significant Python programming.
> That doesn't make ???end of line as end of statement??? a problem.

True, although it does make it a thing which *has* at least one problem.

> If a language feature is beneficial in far greater proportion to the
> inconveniences of that feature, I'd say that feature *is not a problem*
> for users of that language.

I wouldn't.

Lemme give a concrete example, from C, since that's the language I know best.
There are sound technical reasons for which C lets you manipulate pointers.
If you couldn't, it wouldn't be C, and you couldn't do the bulk of the stuff
that makes C useful.  But...

Pointer manipulation leads to crashes.  LOTS of crashes.  I have never met
a C programmer with over a day or two of experience who has not had a
program crash due to some mishap involving a pointer.

When people say that a language like, say, Java, is trying to solve the
problems of C's pointer system, I think that's a reasonable thing to try to
do.  There are tradeoffs.  But it would be, IMHO, silly to claim that there
are no problems with pointers; there are just benefits which outweigh them
*for the things the language is trying to do*.

-s
-- 
Copyright 2011, all wrongs reversed.  Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam at seebs.net
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