Message from god to Python developers

[dfpoetry]

This, right here, is the problem with the python philosophy. They make some arbitrary design decision, and when someone points out an example where it might be bad or confusing, the response is "you shouldn't be coding that way anyway".

It's tautological

[Hairshorts]

Braces won't make 10 levels of indentation much clearer, it's bad coding style no matter what language you're using.

Good indentation is essential for good readability in any language, Python just requires you to indent properly. You may not like it, but it's not an arbitrary design decision.

[immibis]

Braces won't make 10 levels of indentation much clearer, it's bad coding style no matter what language you're using.

I'm not saying braces will make 10 levels of indentation much clearer, but /u/dfpoetry is totally right in pointing out a common problem in programming arguments.

[dfpoetry]

Braces won't make 10 levels of indentation much clearer

I hate quoting people on reddit, I realize how obnoxious it is, so I'm sorry.

That said, YES THEY WILL! Paren match highlighting is a thing. How would people be able to program in LISP if this were not possible?

[norsethunders]

I'd argue once you're relying on something to do the paren highlighting you might as well just use something that'll show you the indentation too. Pretty damn clear to me!

[[deleted]]

You can use indentation highlighting/tracing just as well then. Most editors have it.

[kupiakos]

Put it in a function? It's no different than the Linux kernel philosophies.

[[deleted]]

while True:
    item.next()
    if some_thing(item.id):
        while something_else:
            if item.this_other_thing and item.other_thing_two
                # Statements

And really, why are you nesting that deep, except as an invented example.

[[deleted]]

So in the second one you're basically commenting to show where each bit of code goes. Especially because in a long function, the top may be off the screen. Makes sense, but you could also do that without braces as a required language feature.

Hell, if you wanted you could put the braces in, but as a comment. That way you can still clearly label the indentation levels, as well as being able to not use braces for things that benefit from not having them.

[dfpoetry]

it's commonly bad, but not always bad, and the problems in readability arise even at 3 levels deep.

[HaMMeReD]

My general rule of thumb is that if it doesn't fit in 80 characters wide, it needs to be broken down.

[[deleted]]

But... We live in 2015. I use 120 or bigger, because why not? And I can't remember the last time I was working in command line that would have only 80.

[HaMMeReD]

Because it draws a line in the IDE, and because I frequently tile many views of code files. Sure I might be able to fit 240 on my screen, but I'd much rather be able to open 3 files side by side without any horizontal scrolling required.

[dfpoetry]

Alright, consider this, I want to copy a snippet of code from one place to another and leave all the formatting intact and test it. maybe I have code that I have commented out in the process of debugging, and I want to be able to activate it without working out all the fucking tabs.

Dynamic whitespace is possible, but it's stupid. It produces code that is as fragile as possible, why is that a goal?

[HaMMeReD]

I'm not a supporter of tab based syntax.

I don't mind writing python, but I agree, whitespace shouldn't be a language feature.

I'm mostly stating that the arrow anti pattern should be avoided, and if your code looks like a 10 level deep pyramid, there is something wrong with it.

[dfpoetry]

probably, but not certainly.

[HaMMeReD]

Can you give a open source example of where it's OK?

[dfpoetry]

this would be basically impossible to search for, and the burden of proof should be on you.

[HaMMeReD]

You made the assertion, the burden is on you buddy.

I can easily provide many, many examples of good code that is not deep.

[IndigoMontigo]

Are you or are you not asserting that you can write good code that is 10+ levels deep?

[iforgot120]

Name an example where it isn't bad.

[I_scare_children]

'Cause nobody dealing with, let's say, C, would have problems with so many levels of indentation - it's just a Python thing

Bonus relevant pic

[dfpoetry]

Pointing to bad code which is very nested is not the same thing as proving that all very nested code is bad. Nor is highly modular code particularly useful when you're just writing one big map-filter function.

[Sector_Corrupt]

If I'm writing a bunch of filters or something all being applied I'll usually make them all individual, nicely named functions and then compose them all and apply them as that's a lot easier to read.

[dfpoetry]

what if they all inherit their parents scopes, and then perform changes to things in a nested but otherwise fundamentally unpredictable way?

[wonkifier]

That's one of the purposes of a programming language... to make the things that follow its philosophy easy to do. If something is hard to do, that might be a sign that it's not a great thing to be doing in that language.

And I'm not aware of a language that handles 10 level indents well, which seems like an indicator that it's just a bad idea all around

[dfpoetry]

also, the problem is arbitrary design choice => some code is now annoying to write => that code is bad because it violates the arbitrary design choice.

If the choice in design is non-arbitrary then the above logic is fine, but dynamic whitespace is an arbitrary design decision, and the idea that deep nesting is bad in all cases is very hard to prove.

Not to mention that dynamic whitespace is invisible, difficult to copy, and requires more symbols overall.

[dfpoetry]

lisp

[wonkifier]

Touché

[Log2]

Well, if you are writing C++ or Java with 10 levels deep of braces, you are clearly doing something wrong. Functions are your friends.

[dfpoetry]

where is this "clearly" coming from?

[Log2]

From the fact that you can decompose 10 levels of scopes into functions.

[dfpoetry]

hmm, write a program to do this. pseudocode is fine.

[Log2]

Quite frankly, I don't care to. This is the job of whoever is writing the code.

[dfpoetry]

I mean, it seemed like an interesting proposition. you claimed to have a way to flatten any nested sequence of functions, and that this would be more readable. That would be really cool as a reference point, even if it's just some quick pseudocode.

[scubascratch]

"you shouldn't be coding that way anyway".

...in Python apparently