Teaching python to non-programmers

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:39 PM, Tim Chase
<python.list at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> On 2014-04-11 11:34, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> >> That's equivalent to being told "Don't ever delete any of your
>> >> code, just comment it out". I don't care who's saying that, it's
>> >> bad advice.
>> >
>> > The correct analogy: "Dont ever delete content from the
>> > repository"
>>
>> No -- the repository is the email archive. (Your inbox, perhaps.)
>> You don't keep a copy of the entire repo in every source file.
>
> Clearly you've not seen some of the corporate code-bases I've had to
> touch. «shudder»  I still have nightmares about vast swaths of code
> commented out or "#ifdef 0"ed out.
>
> Then again, since they used Visual Source Safe, it might have been
> the smarter/safer option ;-)

I think Steven was agreeing with me that it's bad advice, rather than
that it never happens... There's an expression on The Daily WTF:
"Enterprise happens". Covers this situation well, IMO.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Enterprise-Dependency.aspx

ChrisA