for -- else: what was the motivation?

[dn]

On 10/10/2022 16.19, avi.e.gross at gmail.com wrote:
> I won't reply to everything Dave says and especially not the parts I fully agree with.
> 
> I think in many situations in life there is no ONE way to do things so most advice is heuristic at best and many exceptions may exist depending on your chosen approach. As such, I do not really think in PYTHON when writing code but an amalgam of many languages with all kinds of ways of doing things and then zoom in on how to do it in the current language be it Python or R or JavaScript and so on. Yes, I am in some sense focused but also open, just as in Human languages I may mostly be thinking in English but also sometimes see words and phrases pop into my mind from other languages that mean about the same thing and then filter it out to focus on whichever language I am supposed to be using at the time.

Given that we can both remember programming last-century, this 
surprised. (or may have misunderstood!)


If we think, in German, of some parting words for an older friend 
departing on a long trip, and translate word-for-word into English we 
might come out with: "May God pickle you".

There is a second step, which is to examine the 'solution' in terms of 
its expression (how the communication will be received), and thus the 
more-correct English expression would be: "May God preserve you"!

The two p-words are sufficiently-similar in meaning to appear 
synonymous, when examined in-isolation. However, that first expression 
would at least bemuse an (only) English-speaker, and quite possibly confuse!


One of the problems which 'appeared' when programmers were first given 
direct-access to the computer, eg time-sharing mini-computers; and which 
persists to this day, is "the rush to code". Indeed there are (still) 
some 'managers' who think that unless a programmer is writing code (s)he 
isn't 'working' - but we're only interested in our own behavior.

Accordingly, "design" and "development".

Back-when, some lecturers insisted that we first create a flow-chart or 
a pseudo-code solution for an assignment - BEFORE we coded in COBOL, 
FORTRAN, or whatever. In many ways, because we were learning the 
programming-language, most felt it very difficult to draw a flow-chart 
that didn't merely look like FORTRAN.
(to make that worse (for ourselves) I suspect many of us performed the 
latter first, and then ...) Many of us will have felt this some sort of 
academic-exercise or even 'a nuisance', but there was 'method in their 
madness'!


Relating back to the comment (above): when *designing* a 
solution/flow-charting/pseudo-code, an "amalgam" of programming 
constructs and human-language expressions will indeed add richness, 
opportunity, and alternatives. All serving to amplify analytic and 
design skill.

Conversely, when *coding*, the skill comes from employing the (specific, 
programming) language to best advantage. At which time, one's 
JS-knowledge is almost irrelevant, because the task is to convert a 
design outline or planned-solution, into Python.
(idiomatic, pythonic, efficient, readable, ...)
-- 
Regards,
=dn