From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2009-05-29T04:51:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Pythonic indentation (or: beating a dead horse)

Juan Zanos wrote:
> On May 28, 2009, at 2:33 PM, James Britt wrote:

>> But we're back in the realm of subjectivity regarding what is "bare 
>> minimum of code" and "superfluous".  Ruby could be made quite terse, 
>> but that's not a proper goal.
> Terseness is a perfectly reasonable goal.  It's a corollary to Occam's 
> Razer.

Hardly.

> No?   If you're going to sacrifice conciseness you should have a good 
> reason
> for doing so.

Readability for humans.

terse != concise.

I'm for concise speech, but not so fond of terseness.


> 
>>
>> There is value in redundancy, and the trick is to find the right 
>> balance, not to eliminate it completely.
> 
> Exactly.  So there should be a choice.  Right?

In what? In how a language is designed?  You're free to design whatever 
you like.

BTW, one thing about these sort of threads that puzzles me is why, given 
the amazing choice of programming languages, do people push, for 
example, to have Ruby be like Python,  when Python exists?  And do these 
same people also go on Python lists and argue to make Python more like Ruby?

If you want terseness, use Perl or APL.


>>
>> Programming is a form of technical writing; judicious use of white 
>> space is a critical means of communicating with the reader.
>>
>>
>>     Some times I really do
>>     want to do this.
>>
>>     This is a powerful option.
>>
> It's possible to do this too.  Is it not?

In a language such as Python?

If Ruby had magic indentation, could I do this?


def foo x,
         y,
         z

    some code

        Some Important Code I want to emphasize

        More Important Code I want to emphasize

    more code




James