[Tutor] Beginners question

[Alan Gauld]

On 03/04/2020 10:19, Peter Otten wrote:

> Over the years there were some really cool additions to Python (generators, 
> list comprehensions, context managers), but for some time my impression is 
> that the language is going from lean and mean to baroque.

I think that is an inevitable consequence of Python's leap in popularity
over the last 5 years or so. Everybody wants their pet feature added.

It was the same with C++ in the mid-90s. C++ went from a fairly
straightforward extension to C to provide OOP features to a
horrible mess of new extensions and paradigms.

C++ is slowly evolving into a new version of itself, very different
to its C origins. And many of the features added in the mid 90's
are now deprecated, and replaced by newer ideas. But the modern C++
is so different to the C++ I learned around 1990 that I've decided
to approach it as a completely new language with its own idioms.
I've been putting this off but Covid19 has provided the time
and opportunity to get stuck in!

Hopefully Python will never go quite that far down the road of
feature creep...
But the walrus operator is IMHO a horrible addition which I don't
intend using. While it avoids the worst feature of C's assignment
expression it is still ugly and overly complex.

Perhaps the worst example in Python is string formatting.
We now have at least 4 different ways of formatting strings.
That's at least 2 too many...


-- 
Alan G
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