[Python-ideas] Descouraging the implicit string concatenation

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 01:43:53PM +0100, Søren Pilgård wrote:

[...]
> I have also experienced beginners asking why you can do `x = "abc"
> "def"` but not `a = "abc"; b = "def"; x = a b` and then you have to
> either explain them the differences between strings and string
> literals or just tell them to always use `+`.

If you tell them to "always use `+`", you are teaching them to be 
cargo-cult coders who write code they don't understand for reasons they 
don't know.

Life is too short to learn *everything*, I know that, and I've certainly 
copied lots of code I don't understand (and hoped I'd never need to 
debug it!). If that makes me a cargo-cult coder too, so be it.

But never over something as simple as the difference between names a and 
b, and string literals "abc", "def".


-- 
Steve