Python is going to be hard

[alister]

On Wed, 03 Sep 2014 19:33:41 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

> On Thursday, September 4, 2014 7:56:31 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico
> wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Rustom Mody wrote:
>> > On Thursday, September 4, 2014 7:26:56 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico
>> > wrote:
>> >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Rustom Mody wrote:
>> >> >>>> NO PRINT
>> >> Why are you so dead against print?
>> > Because it heralds a typical noob code-smell [especially  when the OP
>> > admits that BASIC is his background]
> 
>> And, of course, all those lovely Unix programs that produce output on
>> stdout, they're full of code smell too, right? I don't care what
>> someone's background is; console output is *not* code smell.
> 
> Tell me the same after having taught a few thousand students If you are
> at the level of writing useful unix scripts, you are not going to be
> asking these questions.
> 
>> Anyway, all you're doing is relying on the magic of interactive mode to
>> call repr() and print() for you.
> 
> Yes its usually called DRY.
> That P in the REPL is put in a neat and nifty place. Why repeat?
> 
>> >> Yes, or the OP could work with actual saved .py files and the
>> >> reliability that comes from predictable execution environments...
>> >> and use print.
>> > Dunno what you are talking about The interpreter-REPL is less
>> > reliable than a script?
> 
>> When you start a script, you have a consistent environment - an empty
>> one. When you write a series of commands in the interactive
>> interpreter, the environment for each one depends on all the preceding
>> commands. So when you have a problem, you might have to copy and paste
>> the entire interpreter session, rather than just the one command.
> 
> Agreed. Thats a downside.
> Very minor compared to the mess induced by unstructured print-filled
> noob code.

until the New programmer (I hate the word noob, it looks too derogatory 
even when that is not the intention) has learnt enough to be using a 
logging module i can see no alternative to using print for debugging 
purposes.

I would agree that in production code they are often the wrong option 
(although still valid for CLI applications.) 



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