on writing a while loop for rolling two dice

Avi Gross avigross at verizon.net
Tue Sep 7 00:05:36 EDT 2021


It has been nearly three decades since I have had to write in C, Stefan, but
what I suggested jokingly is quite mild compared to what the winners of the
obfuscated C Contest do:

https://www.ioccc.org/

Time for me to drop out of this thread. Personally I fully agree uses of
"while' as described are perfectly understandable. Features that
sophisticated programmers love tend to confuse novices. I recall my exposure
to PERL where weird things seemed to just happen with no rhyme or reason or
connections. Turned out just about everything puts things into or takes them
out of hidden variables so much of the time, a string of commands just does
what might be expected. Another variant on the elusive concept of a
pipeline. But all the nice gimmicks and tricks make novices a bit puzzled.
On the other hand, you can still write most programs the old fashioned way
and sort of start normal then head off into hyperspace at warp speed.

Python too has a way to write fairly unsophisticated programs as well as
idioms and methods that rapidly become hard to comprehend.

-----Original Message-----
From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avigross=verizon.net at python.org> On
Behalf Of Stefan Ram
Sent: Monday, September 6, 2021 7:49 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: on writing a while loop for rolling two dice

"Avi Gross" <avigross at verizon.net> writes:
> In languages like C/C++ there are people who make up macros like:
>#define INDEFINITELY_LOOP while (true)
>Or something like that and then allow the preprocessor to replace 
>INDEFINITELY_LOOP with valid C code.

  Those usually are beginners.

>So, how to do something like that in python, is a challenge left to the 
>user

  Such a use of macros is frowned upon by most C programmers,
  because it renders the code unreadable.

  "while(1)" in C or "while True:" in Python is perfectly clear.
  Don't fix it if it ain't broke!


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