[Tutor] Fwd: What's in a name?

[spir]

On 01/04/2014 06:36 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> Now, it's true that when *debugging code*, being able to see the name of
> the variable and the contents of the variable is useful. But in ordinary
> code, why would you care to print the name of the variable and its
> contents. Who cares what the variable is named?
>
> Debuggers stick all sorts of nasty hooks into the running interpreter in
> order to do this (and much more), and we should all be thankful that (1)
> debuggers exist, (2) that they aren't running by default, and most
> importantly (3) that we don't have to write code like them.
>
> In addition to powerful debuggers, we also have fantastic poor-man's
> debugger called "print":
>
> for name, value in zip(
>              'alist blist clist'.split(), [alist, blist, clist]):
>      print(name, "=", value)

I dream of a 'note' debug write function (or better statement with keyword, like 
assert) working like:

	n = 0
	i = 1
         note n 		# ==> n = 1
         note i n	# ==> i = 0 | n = 1
	note i (type)	# ==> i = 0 (int)
	note i (where)	# ==> i = 0 (mod.cls.f, 333)

(The latter version gives full func name & line n° in module.)

I have always disliked debuggers, and REPL's as well (both too rigid & heavy), 
so maybe my view is somewhat marginal.

> Yes, it's a little bit messy code. We have to repeat the name of the
> variable twice. But this isn't code that will hang around in the
> finished program. It only need exist for just long enough to debug the
> problem we're having (you are having a problem, I presume?), then, it's
> job done, it's gone.

You are right, but people who like exploratory, flexible, trial-and-error 
programming (even at tmes, not systematically), constantly write such debug 
statemetns or pieces of code, anew. (That's why I tend to let them code for a 
while; and I use a "write" debug func which just wraps print, just to have 
another name and be able to find & erase them all at once quickly.)

Denis