Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2016 02:46 am, Rustom Mody wrote:

> On Tuesday, April 19, 2016 at 9:44:39 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Tue, 19 Apr 2016 01:04 pm, Rustom Mody wrote:
>> 
>> > And more generally that programmers sticking to text when rest of world
>> > has moved on is rather backward:
>> 
>> I'm pretty sure that the rest of the world has not moved on from text.
> 
> Run your popular search engine on "popular linux apps" or some such 

When you did that, did you do so by pointing and clicking on a menu of
symbolic icons, or by typing the text "popular linux apps"? 

When the search engine provides the search results for you, does it fetch up
a bunch of little pictures, or a list of text URLs with an extract of the
text from the site?

When I try it:

https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=popular%20linux%20apps

I get text:

What Are The Best 10 Linux Desktop Apps?
This weekend, I'm going to be spending some time at the Southeast Linux Expo
(SCALE) and presenting at the Linux Beginner Training. I'm doing the
Desktops and ...
linux.com/learn/what-are-best-10-linux-desktop-apps

Lifehacker Pack for Linux: Our List of the Best Linux Apps
NOTE: This post is outdated. Check out the most recent Lifehacker Pack for a
more up-to-date list of essential Linux apps. Note that, unlike Windows and
OS X, Linux ...
lifehacker.com/5924951/lifehacker-pack-for-linux-our-lis...

20 Popular Ubuntu Linux Apps to Try Now | PCWorld
As Ubuntu Linux continues to grow in popularity, most discussions of it tend
to focus on the basics of the operating system itself, including
especially ...
pcworld.com/article/249663/20_popular_ubuntu_linux_ap...

and so forth.

The death of text as a communication medium is greatly exaggerated.


> and 
> you will get for example:
> 
> inkscape
[...]

How ironic that you are using a text-based medium to claim that people
have "moved on" from text. Why didn't you draw us a picture to make your
argument?



> Do these look like text-based apps to you?

Depends on what you mean by text-based.

I don't doubt that some popular applications are used for manipulating media
other than text, e.g. Gimp. But others are all about text: the two most
popular parts of the LibreOffice application suite are used for word
processing and spreadsheets, both text-based media.

Perhaps the most common use of photo editing software like Photoshop and
Gimp is to add text to images.

Even for applications that are used to generate non-text media, their UIs
are filled with text: menus and buttons display words, help screens filled
with text, status bars that display the current coordinates of the mouse as
text, dialog boxes filled with text boxes that you type into. When the UI
has controls which can be controlled by the mouse (e.g. sliders), the
control's value is usually displayed as text.

Even colour wheels invariably display their results as text, as RGB triples
or HTML codes.

You list Firefox (but neglect Thunderbird) but browsing the web is still
primarily a text-based medium. Not only is the fundamental file format of
the web (HTML) text, but the information displayed is more often than not
text. Even when the site displays non-text media, the pages usually include
a way for people to comment, which they do by clicking from a menu of
pre-defined emotions and messages displayed as icons.

Nah, just kidding. They comment by writing text.


I think that your assertion that the "rest of world has moved on" from text
to be nonsense on stilts, but *even if you were right* that doesn't imply
that programmers should do the same. Programmers operate under particular
constraints which the average podcaster or film-maker does not have to deal
with.

Just because some people communicate through the medium of interpretative
dance doesn't mean that programmers can or should.



-- 
Steven