Steve Litt wrote:
> I wrote an essay on the whitespace significance of Python, or more
> specifically part of the essay is on that. It's here:
>
> http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/tpromag/199908/index.htm#_readability
>
Heh. Good little essay, Steve. Most of what you say there about
self-documenting code style suits me just fine.
The only problem for me is that "compiler-enforced" bit. The problem
there is that not every programmer in the world thinks like the guys
that created and improved Python. What comes across as self-documenting
to some programmers just seems difficult to read to others.
It's true that it takes more attention to detail and maybe even more
effort to make your code self-documenting when you don't have a fairly
large percentage of that self-documentation enforced by the rules of the
language. Unfortunately, if you're the one that will have to maintain
the code later and a particular indentation scheme isn't as suited to
your way of thinking as another, a programming language that enforces
the one and not the other might do more harm than good. This, of
course, assumes a programmer that knows what he's doing.
I don't have a problem with Python, as long as I'm not the one looking
at it. I think it's a great idea, within the realm of those suited to
it. I'm glad it has proven so useful and good for so many. I'm not one
of them.
I guess I just prefer "can do" more than "have to do", when all is said
and done. That, I'm sure, is one of the major high points of Perl for
me: you pretty much "can do" anything, including patching your OS kernel
in one line of code -- though you'd probably have to be insane to do
some of the things you "can do".
Feel free to send me links for more essays, though. It's good reading.
-- Chad
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