Old Man Yells At Cloud

[John Pote]

On 16/09/2017 19:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> writes:
>> "Hi, I've been programming in Python for what seems like days now, and here's
>> all the things that you guys are doing wrong.
>    I never ever have written a line of Python 2. I started with
>    Python 3.6.0. Yet a very frequent mistake of mine is the
>    imission of parentheses after »print«.
>
>    WRT my other common errors, It thought of writing
>    a program that autocorrects my source code as follows:
>
>    Whenever the next line is indented more, add a colon:
>
> abd def ghi
>      jkl mno pqr
I've used Komodo in the past and that editor works other way round, type 
a ':' at the end of a line and the next line is indented. I would 
presume other language aware editors take the same approach.
print """
Your idea would require considerable inteligence in the editor,
     1. Otherwise the previous line would print with a ':'
     2. That would frustrate me.....
"""
>
> --------------------->
>
> abd def ghi:
>      jkl mno pqr
>
>    Whenever the next line is indented more, add "def" to
>    what looks like a call (and does not start with »class«
>    or »def«;
>
> f( x ):
>      return x * x
>
> --------------------->
>
> def f( x ):
>      return x * x
>
>    Whenever a line starts with "print" and no parentheses
>    are following, add them:
>
> print x, 2
Strangely I find it irksome to have to write print as a function call in 
Python 3. Must reflect those long ago days when I started to program 
(oops, I mean code - programming came later). Come to think of it 
there's something irksome about every language I've ever used. Python 
probably the least.....
>
> --------------------->
>       
> print( x, 2 )
>
>    Implementing algorithms from "The Art of Computer
>    Programming" might sometimes be difficult in Python, since
>    those algorithms IIRC often use »goto«.
Good point. I also have a copy of that work of art (and the fascicles - 
I must get out more). Sadly little work these days requires diving into 
them. In fairness to Knuth his pseudo code is a high level assembler 
fully described in Vol:1 and done as such so folk from any high level 
language background could follow the algorithms. Back then many like 
myself, or indeed most coders, had a hardware background and well used 
to assembler. The nearest thing most silicon has to structured 
programming is call and return, gotos are everywhere.
I always think one of the reasons Basic became so popular was its /goto 
/statement. The other was the run command, no need to compile.
See /http://entrian.com/goto// for a Python implementation from many 
years ago. No idea if it still works. To be honist never needed it - 
Python has exceptions.
Also there was a interesting thread '/"Goto" statement in Python/' in 
April this year (not the 1st).  Although mainly interesting for its 
references to gotos in 'C' which I use daily now. err 'C' that is. . . . 
. .
Used to wind up colleagues by saying loudly "Great, I can use a /*goto 
*/here.....". This attracted considerable verbal abuse from purists in 
earshot and instruction from the boss NOT TO which I pretended to 
ignore. After all Python programming is supposed to be fun!

>