[Novalug] Why Python

James Ewing Cottrell III JECottrell3@Comcast.NET
Thu Aug 1 01:21:19 EDT 2013


Good Post Karri. One other benefit...you get to Be Lazy and blow off two 
extra characters and one or two extra lines.

My only unease is that it makes editors work harder to find the 
Beginning and End of Sections...there is no explicit character to search 
for.

What does the '%' command do in vi(m) when editing Python? Or Ruby?

And it makes Automatic Indentation almost impossible if the whitespace 
gets mangled.

JIM

On 7/24/2013 1:12 PM, Karri Balk wrote:
>
> I have trouble understanding the resistance to using Python because
> of the indentation requirement.  Early in my career I worked with
> companies that had coding standards and the level of indentation
> was specified in those standards.  So proper indentation was expected
> and became ingrained.  Coding standards don't seem to be in as much use
> now, although some languages have style guides that serve the same
> purpose.
>
> Indentation also makes sense in terms of producing readable code.
> Having seen lots of ugly code later in my career, you appreciate
> proper indentation as it assists in readability and maintainability
> of the code.
>
> Also, if you use editors (like vi or vim) that have plugins to auto-
> magically handle indentation, it doesn't require much effort to do the
> right thing.
>
> Also, indentation has nothing to do with the power or capability of
> the language, so you'd think it'd be pretty far down the list of
> reasons why not to use the language.
>
> Regarding Perl versus Python - I love Perl's ease of parsing; no special
> function calls or APIs needed.  By the same token, Python is OO-centric,
> whereas OO is a clunky amendment to Perl, even though Moose makes it
> easier.  But as others expressed, it's important to use the language
> requested by the company or client.
>
> Regarding Python testing - here's a general starting point of
> information, although I'm not sure it covers all of Ed James's questions:
>
>      http://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html
>
> There are quite of few testing frameworks for Python and there was a
> talk at NOVA Python that covered many of them.  The talk was recorded
> and can be found here:
>
>      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-QzJstRdwo&feature=youtu.be
>
> Karri
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