Python Newbie

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 11:40:05 -0800, piterrr.dolinski wrote:

>> > if (some statement):		# short form
>> >
>> > rather than
>> >
>> > if (some statement == true):	# long form
>> 
>> 
>> What all those ugly brackets are for?
>> 
>> 
> Mark,
> 
> Back in the day when C was king, or take many newer long established
> languages (C#, Java),

Python is older than either C# or Java. Why have those languages paid no 
attention to the innovations of Python, instead of copying the 
misfeatures of C?

Pascal and Algol and Fortran are older than C. Why did C introduce 
unnecessary brackets when these older languages did not need them?


> the use of () has been widespread and mandated by
> the compilers. I have never heard anyone moan about the requirement to
> use parentheses.

You have not been paying attention.

In many ways, C has been a curse on programming. It has trained large 
numbers of coders to expect and *demand* poor syntax.


> Now come Python in which parens are optional, and all
> of a sudden they are considered bad and apparently widely abandoned. Do
> you really not see that code with parens is much more pleasing visually?

That's funny. Perhaps you should be programming in Lisp.


> I could understand someone's reluctance to use parens if they are very
> new to programming and Pythons is their first language. But my
> impression here is that most group contributors are long-time
> programmers and have long used () where they are required. Again, I'm
> really surprised the community as a whole ignores the programming
> "heritage" and dumps the parens in a heartbeat.

(Because they are unnecessary) (visual noise) (that don't add anything) 
(useful) (to the reader's understanding) (of the code).



-- 
Steven