Python is readable

[Steve Howell]

On Mar 21, 12:16 am, Chris Rebert <c... at rebertia.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Steve Howell <showel... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Mar 20, 10:40 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Steve Howell <showel... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> > So saying "push(stack, item)" or "push(item, stack)" seems very
> >> > unsophisticated, almost assembly-like in syntax, albeit at a higher
> >> > level conceptually than assembly.
>
> >> Perhaps it does, but "push(stack, item)" and "stack.push(item)" are so
> >> close to identical as makes no odds (in a number of languages, the
> >> latter is just syntactic sugar for something like the former) - yet
> >> they "read" quite differently, one with verb first, one with noun
> >> first.
>
> > On the one hand, you say that "push(stack, item)" reads quite
> > differently from "stack.push(item)".
>
> > On the other hand, you say they are "so close to identical as makes no
> > odds."
>
> > I'm trying to make sense of that.  Are you saying that the way the two
> > idioms read makes no odds, despite reading quite differently?
>
> >> Code doesn't follow the same grammar as English prose, and forcing it
> >> to usually makes it sound odd. Reader.can_comprehend(code) is True.
>
> > Code shouldn't necessarily follow the example of English prose, but it
> > seems that English has had some influence:
>
> >  1  push(stack, item) # Push on the stack the item
> >  2  push(item, stack) # Push the item on the stack
> >  3  stack.push(item)  # On the stack, push the item
> <snip>
> >  6  item push stack   # Take the item; push it on the stack.
> <snip>
> > #4 and #5 are sort of Forth-like, maybe?  #6 is just downright
> > strange.
>
> #6 is just an infix binary operator (likewise with its cousin #3, just
> remove the punctuation). If you change the name slightly, it becomes
> more sensical. One could easily write in Haskell:
>     item `pushOnto` stack
> which would just be syntactic sugar for #2. Not that I endorse #6,
> merely saying it's less weird than you think.
>

Ha, you're right, verb-in-the-middle is just infix.  So, if you don't
care about the order of the nouns, you have three forms:

  verb first: English-imperative ("boil water", "add noodles/salt",
"serve in dish") or math-functional, e.g. sum(a,b,c)
  verb middle: infix, arithmetic-like ("5 plus 4", "10 divided by 2")
or English-descriptive ("Dog bites man")
  verb last: Forth-like, maps well to simple underlying
implementation

I guess the OO syntax is really verb-first when you think of
"stack.push" as the verb.