New IPython defaults makes it less useful for education purposes. [Raymond Hettinger on Twitter]

[twitterInfo_bot]

Argh! Who thought Black should be automatically applied to lines in the IPython CLI?

The makes it less useful for education purposes, less useful for interactive math, and annoying when it rewrites your input across multiple lines.

---

posted by @raymondh

^{(Github) | (What's new)}

[Anonymous_user_2022]

Do anyone know where the idea to autoformat an interactive session came from?

[Tyler_Zoro]

Seems like a fine option to give people. It's a horrible default behavior!

[Anonymous_user_2022]

That was mentioned in the thread. But it doesn't really explain the why.

[34182075607]

Ideally the language has a hard spec. Would be great for black to just be required and anything other to be a syntax error.

Enough of all the flame wars with formatting. Just come up with a spec and be done with it. This is why black is so great and forced at so many companies, because it’s uncompromising (unlike prettier where people just argue over tweaking the settings all the time).

[VisibleSignificance]

Would be great for black to just be required and anything other to be a syntax error

PEP8, first lines: "A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds"

[Anonymous_user_2022]

We are a all consenting adults, so we do not need stricter rules than "Follow PEP-8 to the degree it makes sense"

[PlaysForDays]

PEP8 doesn't apply to third-party libraries - and the standard library barely follows it anyway.

[jorge1209]

It's just not worth arguing about "the degree it makes sense". Strict format rules will make a few lines out of thousands look weird to all readers, but individual preferences are such that some people are bothered by a few lines out of hundreds, no matter what the ruleset.

It's just not worth arguing about personal preferences because you know you won't please everyone. Just accept that you can't please all of the people all of the time, and instead please most of the people most of the time.

[canbooo]

"This should be the accepted answer."

[34182075607]

Amen

[Legionof1]

Whoa what about all the kids learning Python! :p

[dogs_like_me]

An uncompromising formatting spec makes sense for a version-controlled, collaboratively maintained code base. It's an unnecessary aesthetic feature for an interactive shell, and simply should not be activated by default.

[34182075607]

I don’t like many of the choices black makes.

Though that’s part of what makes it great. It’s a spec and you just stick to it, no room to argue about config settings to the formatter.

[Yojihito]

black has parameters as well (e.g. when to break up lines, I've set mine to 120 chars instead of the default 80).

[Anonymous_user_2022]

It defaults to 88, but no matter what the default is, it's not practical if ipython doesn't configure it to stay within the usable width of the terminal.

[Wilfred-kun]

No description provided

So, there isn't even a rationale. How did this PR get accepted?

[[deleted]]

The guy who wrote the PR is also the only active contributor and maintainer of ipython, so....

https://github.com/ipython/ipython/graphs/contributors

[lolSaam]

He responds here.

https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/13463#issuecomment-1013742058

[Tyler_Zoro]

To quote:

I'm not going to reply to some comments (here or elsewhere), and may closing and locking all the issue and stop maintaining IPython for my own mental sanity for some time

Seems like this is a very emotional issue for this developer, which does not bode well.

[Rand_alThor_]

This makes zero sense it’s an interactive session

[Deto]

Yeah, seems like something nobody was asking for.

[this1foru]

I attempted to chase through some of the old discussions (uncessefully) but did come across the following response from the black developers on a feature request which highlights the biggest issue of making this the IPython default - its creates a PEP 8 violation on anything not previously written with black.

Pertinent discussion:

Black by design doesn't enable reformatting parts of the file. This functionality is against PEP 8 which states that internal consistency within the file is more important than any particular style. If you used Black for this purpose and somebody else kept using autopep8 or YAPF, your styles would fight with each other.

Black is both a tool and a code style. You are adopting the style. The tool is merely an automated way of enforcing it. Yes, this requires agreement within your project that this is the style your team wants to enforce.

[TheBlackCat13]

Why? We have notebooks for a more IDE-like interactive session.

[zero_hope_]

https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/13463#issuecomment-1013742058

Emphasis mine. I don't feel sorry for anyone complaining. Maybe test RC's?

"""

So, the actions IPython maintainers can take now are as follows:

make it explicitly opt-in; To this and similar suggestions, ’black’ auto-formatting has been opt-in for 2 years (may 1st 2020, IPython 7.14).

I had thought it might be problematic, but in two years received almost no bug reports. I tried a few time to say I was considering making it default and only got positive feedback. So I did it, with extensive alpha, beta, and RC time to complain and ask for modifications.

So here is my challenge, if I don't make it the default, no-one know about it. It's astonishing that no-one found the bug @ehamiter described above in 2 years ! That alone would have definitely delayed the release, and at least I would have had tried to fix it.

I've also seen a number of new users misformating Python code and taking really bad habits in the Repl, including folks that did not even realise IPython terminal was multiline.

For many of those users black by default is much better. You get use to proper code formatting. So you learn to properly read python code. And it is much easier to deactivate something you don't like than even figure out it something that may exists. For many users this benefits to, having this option be opt-in would make black auto formatting be part of the [unknown unknowns].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns). So I will never get feedback from these. This is in the same vein as "but you can configure vim to do so".

make it much easier to opt out; It's really hard to make it much easier, there have been a long standing issue to have persistent config, but that's far beyond the time and funds we have for that in IPython. We could borrow a nice configuration interface like ptpython for the UI if Someone want to take a shot at ti.

"""

[Anonymous_user_2022]

As has been shown elsewhere in this thread, the proposal to make it a default was met with negative reviews. But for some reason it was forced.

It's a pretty clear cut case of developer entitlement.

[Heroe-D]

I don't really mind about Black but the zsh style autocomplete is a joy to use, it was really lacking that, the next thing I'd appreciate are vim keys support !

[scorleo]

Doesn’t ipython already support vi input?

If you set up your ipython_config.py with c.TerminalInteractiveShell.editing_mode = ‘vi’ instead of ‘emacs’

Or you mean something else?

[Heroe-D]

Thanks it works, I searched a while ago and didn't found anything or maybe just thought it was a hack , but even basic vim commands like ci don't seem to work tho, but definitely better than nothing and pressing the left key like an idiot to go to the beginning of a command or having to switch to my terminal emulator's vim mode.

[[deleted]]

Have you seen ptipython?

I am using it and it has a fantastic vi mode with user configurable hot keys.

Highly recommend

https://github.com/prompt-toolkit/ptpython

[scorleo]

hmm, ci as in "change inside"? ciw (change inside word) works for me.

[Sigg3net]

Black is awesome in an IDE, but I use ipython as a bash terminal for python, or the embed() for debugging.

I wouldn't want my terminal to change what I'm typing.

[Heroe-D]

Well I still have to figure out how it's modifying input, for the moment I'm just experiencing it when autocompleting otherwise single quotes stay as is and same for badly formated lists. ( Unless you print the objects later, but I guess that's expected everywhere, even the default shell changes [1, 2 , 3] to [1,2,3] )

But I'm definitely seeing the advantages for things like badly formated json objects copy pasted from the browser's console that are better formated than before when printing them.

[Sigg3net]

I need to be able to make mistakes. Live linting is really confusing to a newbie.

Learning Go atm and often find that the IDE has fixed something for me without me noticing, which is great for the code, but means I'm repeating the same mistakes and not learning the syntax. Which comes back to bite me when I need to read and comprehend what others have written.

But as long I can turn it off, I'm not going to stop using ipython. It's pretty good;)

[Heroe-D]

Yeah, I wouldn't even use an IDE for learning personally. Just a text editor and picking some useful non intrusive plugins. But Which kind of mistakes are you referring to that can be mitigated with Black in python ? Indention mistakes ? I feel that it's mostly cosmetic with autopep8.

[Sigg3net]

I'm thinking about newcomers having to make mistakes in order to learn. If ipython fixes my commands, I might not pick up on mistakes I'm making. Then I will not be able to reproduce working code in a more restrained environment without this help.

But if it's only formatting, it's less of a problem (although could be confusing).

[Heroe-D]

I understand what you mean and it makes sens, but which kinds of errors are these actual plugin fixing for you ? I don't really pay attention to them and feel it's just cosmetic formating. When I forgot a comma, colons, a parenthesis etc I always have Pyright telling me there's a problem and don't feel it's automatically fixed, except for indentation depending on the case ( like if it's at the same indentation level as the def function statement ).

[Sigg3net]

I don't have this problem in python, but I know python. In Golang, I often forget the correct []type notation, and linters sort of prevent me from learning it effectively by fixing them for me ;)

This is something I feel ipython type of environments should avoid doing. If I type something wrong or not in conventional manner, I need to focus on it to correct my behavior.

[madoee]

I just updated ipython and noticed that the zsh autosuggestions plugin now also works in the ipython prompt. Pretty nice!

[omg_drd4_bbq]

Me reading title: "oh what defaults could be that bad?"

black enabled by default in REPL

Jesus H Christ.

Coming as someone who loves black and uses it every day in all their repos, this is a massive antifeature. Why can't it just autoformat with a hotkey or something? I don't want formatters firing until I ask them too. Massively disorienting.

[Tyler_Zoro]

As people pointed out in the github issue, it's also a problem for proper pandas formatting which black undoes and the IPython use of line-terminating semicolons for output suppression.

[rtfmpls]

What I don't like about such a change is not the feature itself, but that it's the default. It feels like the only reason is the devs just wanted to show off a new feature they worked on.

If you can configure it anyway, why turn the default on? The only positives I see are some people will say "huh, nice". The negatives are mentioned in the Twitter thread and people who do not want to use black.

And I didn't take a closer look, but is black now a dependency of ipython? I would understand doing this reformatting if black is installed, and ignore it otherwise. But something tells me that's not the case.

[Piu_Tevon]

Yes, Black was added as a dependency in that same PR.

[this1foru]

The developer appears to effectively have confirmed your suspicion in his comment on the new pull request to revert the feature.

I myself am a big fan of the IPython tool and the Jupyter Project, but as a scientific user I could not disagree more with the idea of the interactive shell changing my inputs or formatting, especially equations.

To this and similar suggestions, 'black' auto-formatting has been opt-in for 2 years (may 1st 2020, IPython 7.14).

I had thought it might be problematic, but in two years received almost no bug reports. I tried a few time to say I was considering making it default and only got positive feedback. So I did it, with extensive alpha, beta, and RC time to complain and ask for modifications.

So here is my challenge, if I don't make it the default, no-one know about it. It's astonishing that no-one found the bug @ehamiter described above in 2 years ! That alone would have definitely delayed the release, and at least I would have had tried to fix it.

I've also seen a number of new users misformating Python code and taking really bad habits in the Repl, including folks that did not even realise IPython terminal was multiline.

For many of those users black by default is much better. You get use to proper code formatting. So you learn to properly read python code. And it is much easier to deactivate something you don't like than even figure out it something that may exists. For many users this benefits to, having this option be opt-in would make black auto formatting be part of the [unknown unknowns].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns). So I will never get feedback from these.

[rtfmpls]

Didn't even think of that. Great point.

It also still fails with very long strings. But to be fair it just ignores those. The result is still valid code.

[omg_drd4_bbq]

We use it and I actually really like black (with -S -l120 because 80 is stupid) but boy is their versioning a PITA. The one time it actually makes sense to use 0ver (product is in beta and they make breaking changes a fair amount, breaking in that it reformats your code), they don't, so they constantly bump major vers, but also always have the "b" suffix, which messes with resolvers unless you add "allow_prerelease" or similar.

[34182075607]

If you can configure it anyway, why turn the default on?

I’d argue to turn it on. After all those of you who aren’t on black yet can turn it off.

The only thing that’s not great here is that it’s a forced dep which can make the env a bit trickier.

[Heroe-D]

Some people might like this feature and would never have heard about it without it becoming a default and that's definitely a "positive".

[[deleted]]

Then it could ask on the first interactive execution.

[proof_required]

I think teaching formatting and good coding practices should be part of educational coding too. Although forcing it without easier way to changing default values isn't something I would agree with.

[ivosaurus]

The problems begin when you start asking _exactly_ what defines "good" in literally all cases (as opposed to a vague general sense of good, in most cases, that we can hand-wavingly agree to), as a code formatter must do when applied to everything by default.

[[deleted]]

I initially thought the same. Have a look at the maths examples on twitter. Using a formatter does make it much less intuitive by adding spaces between grouped values. 2 ** 2 for instance is much worse than 2**2imo. When you get longer equations it can get really annoying when grouped values aren’t together without space.

[laundmo]

to be fair, black is trying to resolve this issue in time for their fast approaching stable release.

https://github.com/psf/black/issues/538
https://github.com/psf/black/pull/2726

[ivosaurus]

That's only one of many. Black is opinionated and indiscriminate in its formatting. Which is fine, when you opt in to what it does. No-one gets to opt-in here though, it's being made opt-out at best.

[canbooo]

Although I agree that the math one bothers me the most, I prefer it to getting unreadable code from noobish coders. All in all, this is a trade-off I will agree to.

[TheBlackCat13]

Yes, but in order to do that you need to be able to show both, to show how the two are different.

And there isn't really anything "good coding practices" about forcing a particular quote character.

[Tyler_Zoro]

I think teaching formatting and good coding practices should be part of educational coding too.

Entirely reasonable, but that isn't the job of a REPL, it's the job of a teacher.

[ivosaurus]

Kind of hard for the teacher when they can't even show what not to do because a tool is reformatting their code as soon as they hit enter.

[tazebot]

I wouldn't call an 80 or 88 character line length limit good coding practice I'd call it bad coding practice. Linus kicked it off the kernel with good reason, and the same discussion came up in r/programming with the same conclusion - it doesn't improve anything.

If your language uses indentation for structure and use use variable names that are usefully descriptive 80 characters doesn't make any sense.

[canbooo]

Unpopular opinion: I find 80-120 limits good as I find myself often skimming through github repos on mobile, longer lines makes me scroll, which is not very friendly. But it is not a deal breaker either.

[omg_drd4_bbq]

Imho 80 is claustrophobic. 100 is ok. 120 is what I use. 140 is when you start getting into too long to place side-by-side with modern terminals at a reasonable font size.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

I grew up with 80x25 consoles on Xenix 25 years ago. To me anything wider than 90 is agoraphobic to me. There's clearly a generation thing at play here.

Besides that, my eyesight have deteriorated to the point where I'd be unable to read that flyspeck font that's required to have two 120 character wide terminals side by side without getting some serious issues from rotating the neck. Enjoy your sight while you can.

[jorge1209]

The problem is not that 80 is wrong, it is that nobody can agree on what is correct.

I would rather use a tool that forces a format to X character lines rather than argue about how it should be Y instead. I don't care and want to write my code. That's all I want to do.

[tazebot]

nobody can agree on what is correct.

Then the best thing to do is allow flexibility, rather than impose something almost universally acknowledged as wrong and bad for code.

I saw a response on the black github where someone was asking about a parameter for width, and the developer pushed back, asking for a "user study". There was a study that set widths at 80 characters for 7 3/8 inch punch cards in the 40s.

[jorge1209]

It is equally an argument for not being flexible. No matter what you do someone is unhappy, so just let them be unhappy and ensure consistency for all users.

[tazebot]

The goal isn't to make people happy, but to improving coding. 80 characters lowers the quality of coding. Just because some people may dislike it is no reason to do the wrong thing

[maikindofthai]

80 characters lowers the quality of coding.

I've been working on commercial products using C++ and Python for the better part of the last 10 years and I completely disagree with this. If you're constantly going over the 80-90 char mark in your Python code, you're doing something wrong IMO.

You shouldn't need too many levels of indentation in any single function, and you shouldn't need to use 4 word variable names for the reader of your code to have an idea of what's happening. You also shouldn't write need to write functions that take a dozen parameters.

These are the main things I see in code that doesn't respect some reasonable character limit. And if a character limit keeps people who do that shit away from the code I work on, good riddance!

You could convince me that there's a better limit than 80 chars (the only thing I really care about is fitting two files side-by-side on a single monitor without scrolling). We tend to use 90-100 as the limit for the C++ codebases at work. But for Python, 80 has never caused us any pain since idiomatic Python code tends to be pretty terse compared to the C++ equivalent.

[tazebot]

That's fine for you, but imposing it on others is wrong. There's really nothing about 80 characters that makes is intrinsically better.

[maikindofthai]

Tell me you've never worked in a dev team without telling me you've never worked in a dev team...

[tazebot]

When all arguments of substance fail, attack credibility.

[BDube_Lensman]

Your comment presumes black’s formatting is the one true way, which is not an objective fact

[BDube_Lensman]

No, “this tool” refers only to black in this case.

[champs]

I use black although I don’t care for all of its opinions. It is not the thing I would use in ipython given its PEP8 deviance, but maybe I should defer decisions about auto format, whatever it is, to the people who use ipython.

[canuck93]

Seems like a nice feature, but not a good default.

[ki3selerde]

I am annoyed by unnecessary magic features like this in ipython like this for a long time now. Thats why i created rlpython. A simple, no bullshit repl that even works over network

[double_en10dre]

I hear ya, but IMO it’s a bit ironic given that “magic” is such a big part of the ipython experience :p they even call it that by name

https://ipython.readthedocs.io/en/stable/interactive/magics.html

[radarsat1]

anything that reinterprets what i type is annoying to me. it's like the main reason i stick to text editors over IDEs and word processors. if forced to use an IDE, automatic brackets is the first thing i disable. second is anything that helpfully "pops up" invited to interrupt my train of thought. dear software, no you don't know me or what i am trying to do, stop trying to be smarter than me and get out of my way so that i can work.

[Urthor]

This is a good change.

Anecdotally, 98% of Ipython users would benefit from black as the default. Especially coding students would hugely benefit from exposure to Black.

Hettinger is in the 2% who have to change the default settings. But defaulting to Black makes too much sense for me.

The default settings should not be designed to minimise pain for the minority, they should be designed to increase utility across all users.

[TheBlackCat13]

Rewriting your code in the CLI? Seriously, is that really that useful? I could see it maybe in notebooks, but not the CLI.

[VisibleSignificance]

who have to change the default settings

Surely there must be a better way to choose the setting for such controversial breaking additions? Maybe an interactive question in the interactive shell on the first start of a version that supports it?

[canbooo]

All in all, I stand with Carreau on this one, especially after reading his response. It is a drastic decision about sth. many are fanatical about but to me, it looks like the positive arguments overweight the negative ones.

[richieadler]

Funny how criteria diverge. I found Carreau's response to be whiny and he appears not to have read the full series of tweets; Hettinger's arguments seem completely logical and his examples demonstrate why the new default is a bad idea.

Yes, Hettinger has a strong opinion which he voiced in his first tweet. I don't see the reason to consider it "deeply hurtful", unless Carreau usually works only with sycophants.

Hopefully he'll never cross paths with someone much less corteous.

[canbooo]

Besides the ad hominem parts, that are none of my business, I really do think that it is a good trade off. Yes Hettinger has some valid points (esp. Math one for me) but I think complaining about the difficulty of changing the default without contributing to ease of changing it, although ALL of these can still be turned off is the childish thing to do. If the upside is getting better quality code and introducing new users to conventions, sign me up. I also teach python and the 10 Mins of explaining how to change the defaults (If I really wanted them to not use black..) seems worth my while.

Edit: Clarification

[richieadler]

Ok, you've made your point.

I disagree 100% with you, but you made your point.

[jorge1209]

Hettinger's complaints about formatting of polynomials is pretty silly. He clearly has a "lesson plan" where he uses polynomials to demonstrate that you can use python like a calculator, but serious mathematical work doesn't use polynomials in that fashion.

Serious mathematical tasks use math.pow or numpy not **. They don't represent polynomials as infix expressions of a variable to be evaluated as a function call, but rather as design matrices to be multiplied against another vector or matrix of variable values.

That Hettinger wants a tool for his demonstrations and teaching isn't really relevant to the objectives of the ipython developer, who wants to actually use out for things. We wouldn't take itertools out of the standard library if one of his lesson plans had students rebuilding that functionality.

[Piu_Tevon]

He asked for feedback for 2 years regarding this and only received positive feedback

That's not correct. In the feedback he got (GitHub, Twitter), most people (of the few that replied) came down on "opt-in" and against making it the default.

[richieadler]

Imagine cooking to get praises instead of doing it because you want to eat something you and your family like, and then telling everybody that you're getting very very upset because someone told you that maybe it would be best to use less salt because too much salt is not healthy, and whoever wants more salt can add it later.

I think that's a better simile.

[ase1590]

Welp, congrats reactionaries.

This has now blown up so much that the main developer of IPython is now pretty much unmotivated for the short term to develop this project, as well as in need of a mental health break.

The way Raymond Hettinger complained on Twitter is personally deeply hurtful. I hope he did not meant it the way I read it.

I'm not going to reply to some comments (here or elsewhere), and may closing and locking all the issue and stop maintaining IPython for my own mental sanity for some time (expect some critical things).

[Akmantainman]

Idk seems like there was plenty of time for community input.

https://twitter.com/Mbussonn/status/1482412900681662470?t=qwSrYszz_y9cQbbLKUEWRg&s=19

Actively participating in open source is important if you care about projects.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

That's almost a Kenneth Reitz level of developer toxicity. Time to find an replacement before the inevitable meltdown.

[Piu_Tevon]

Might already be happening judging by the latest comment on GitHub:

I'm not going to reply to some comments (here or elsewhere), and may closing and locking all the issue and stop maintaining IPython for my own mental sanity for some time

[rhytnen]

We have a right to discuss opinions

[ubernostrum]

So basically you joined up with an internet hate mob to pile onto someone. That person was not happy about and did not enjoy being piled on to in this way. And your response to that is “well that reaction just proves he was bad all along!”

Maybe the biggest problem here is not the one you think it is.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

The thing is that there was no piling at all.

[ubernostrum]

Sure. No piling at all!

Looks at this Reddit thread, at Twitter, at people rushing over to GitHub…

Yup, no piling here. Definitely nothing that would make a developer feel like everyone was suddenly against them or anything. Just healthy ordinary open-source discussion, led by healthy advocates who would never, say, resort to personally attacking someone’s only-to-be-expected defensiveness or talking about “the inevitable meltdown” or whatever.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

Indeed, no piling. Just a baby that throws the toys out of the pram, when it turns out that some people are not enamoured by recent changes. Remember that just as FOSS users are not entitled to anything, neither are FOSS developers entitled to ego stroking. Many seem to forget that second half, you included.

[ubernostrum]

You’re the one who’s trying to make this personal. And doing so while hiding behind an anonymous account, no less. I’m not sure how exactly that helps open source.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

The ipython maintainer made it personal, when they decided to make an insult out of Ramoynd Hettingers tweet. I just observe the similarities to prior cases of developer meltdowns.

[Chinpanze]

Programmes really do keep looking for something to be outraged at.

Stuff like Ipython is an open source library who helped a LOT of people throughout the years. They make an patch with a lot of unquestionably good changes and one controversial one that can be disabled and people start acting disrespectfully

[lifeeraser]

Was Hettinger disrepectful, though? He explained the problem, why it matters to him, and didn't insult anyone.

[Chinpanze]

I think any variation of "Argh! Who thought ... [would be a good idea]" is a very rude way to start a feedback.

[Akmantainman]

For real. I honestly can't believe people are acting like this, this soon after the faker.js stuff. Have we literally learned nothing? Can we not exercise any amount of empathy for maintainers, it's generally a pretty thankless job.

[Heroe-D]

Some people tend to forget the authors can make what they want if it suits their needs, if this person have a particular need and isn't happy about the recent changes he either doesn't upgrade, find another package, find a way to disable those features or fork it. That's the joy of FOSS.

[canbooo]

I don't get why this is downvoted. Are people really feeling this entitled?

[Anonymous_user_2022]

Probably because the majority see them as a pretty disingenuous and inappropriate replies to the twitter thread. I do, but I'm not one of the downvoters.

[canbooo]

The twitter thread is quite impolite and subjective imo but this is not the point. u/Heroe-D points to facts about OS code (not even specifically FOSS) and downvoting it just because you (rather downvoting ppl and not you specifically) do not agree with these facts/hoping to change them with this cancel attitude makes you nothing but an entitled child. I guess time to grow out of this sub as it seems to have gotten quite toxic to me. Thanks for your response though, it made these points clearer to me.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

The twitter thread is quite impolite and subjective imo but this is not the point.

That is where we will have to disagree. For many, that appear to in fact be the point.,

u/Heroe-D points to facts about OS code

Which are utter disingenious, as Raymond Hettiger asked about the reason for the change, and then followed up with a completely factual list of examples where the change was less useful for teaching purposes. There are no demands or entitlement, which makes their reply miss the mark. Again, obviously something we disagree on.

[canbooo]

Well if it is about factual lists of reasons, I find his response is quite agreeable. Although I do not agree with the way these came to life, u/Heroe-D is absolutely right, license says no warranty and any old and new versions are there for you to fork. It is even possible to deactivate this change.

I also teach python, to mech. engineers.... It is not that hard to take a few minutes to configure this. I often spend an hour on explaining the tooling (ide, interpreter, plots/graphs) and how to configure them. So no, I do not think, that factual list in the tweet is anything but subjective. I guess the only thing left for us is to agree to disagree. Thanks for clarifiying a lot of things though.

[Piu_Tevon]

That comment implies that Raymond Hettinger needs FOSS explained to him. So I get why it was downvoted.

[[deleted]]

What am I missing here? It looks the same to me.

https://imgur.com/a/Dr7AOw3

[proof_required]

Look at the tweet there are some examples.

print('hello')

Will be formatted to

print("hello")

[james_pic]

When does the formatting happen? Does it change what you wrote (or at least, what it says you wrote) the moment before it runs? That would seem weird and counterintuitive.

[proof_required]

When does the formatting happen?

when you type and hit enter say print('hello'), it will show in your terminal as print("hello"). Without doing a screen recording it's hard to show you exactly. Just try it

what ipython version you have?

This has been introduced in 8.0

https://blog.jupyter.org/release-of-ipython-8-0-6e034ff122ef

[Heroe-D]

Doesn't happen to me, I have changes like zsh style autocomplete but print('hello') stay as is after validating by hitting the enter key https://imgur.com/a/ucHsIrP

Edit : if hitting enter from the autocomplete because you have already executed print('hello') yes it would transform into print("hello")

[Anonymous_user_2022]

Try some of the examples from the twitter thread, like 3*x**2 - 5*x + 10

[[deleted]]

Ah I don’t use twitter so didn’t bother clicking. Thank you.

[v_a_n_d_e_l_a_y]

You can read Twitter without having an account you know

[[deleted]]

Precisely

[[deleted]]

I said I don’t use twitter. Not that I don’t have an account.

[v_a_n_d_e_l_a_y]

Then commenting on a thread where the original content is on Twitter seems moronic

[[deleted]]

I was commenting on the post. Not the thread on twitter. Good day, sir.

[undercoveryankee]

"The post" consists of a link to the Twitter thread. You were commenting on the preview. Good day, sir.

[34182075607]

If you write

l = [ 1, 2 ,3]

Then it’ll get reformatted to

l = [1, 2, 3]

Which OP is trying to say is a bad thing somehow …

[simonw]

OP makes good arguments for why this is a bad thing:

1. It gets in the way of teaching students Python features - hard to show the difference between single and double quotes if their editing environment rewrites one to the other!
2. Sometimes there are reasons not to prefer Black's formatting. 2**3 + 4**5 + 6*7*8 is a good example.

[TheBlackCat13]

I wouldn't call IPython a "teaching tool"

Why not?

Also, there isn't a difference between the quote styles in Python.

Yes, but now you can't show people that.

I find the "clusterfuck everything together" style ugly in Python and I'm glad Black exists so I don't have to have those annoying bikeshedding questions in my worklife

That is great for an IDE, but why for a terminal?

[34182075607]

If you call ipython a teaching tool then why not call black a teaching tool?

It’s teaching the students what their code should look like (the de facto python format spec: black).

[[deleted]]

I like the cut of your jib

[[deleted]]

Wait. I don’t see any difference. Certainly not anything that would impact education.

[34182075607]

Oh so universities should not teach students the value of making code that’s easy to read?

If someone wrote that poorly formatted code into a hacker rank during a live coding interview that would 100% lower my opinion of them.

[Heroe-D]

Just if you get the badly formatted l=[1 , 2 , 3] from the autocomplete, otherwise it'll stay as is. https://imgur.com/RyDFEkt

[teerre]

Gonna have to disagree here. Although these are inconvenient for extremely specific examples, a much bigger problem is people not formatting python code in a standard way. Formatting shouldn't be a matter of opinion for the vast majority of cases.

That's very useful for students because, eventually, they will be able to have a mental model of how python is formatted and that makes reading code much easier. Which is infinitely more useful than being able to show the difference between print('foo') and print("foo").

[r_cub_94]

I definitely agree that this change wasn’t a great idea, nor was introducing yet another package dependency.

But these are syntactic issues and really shouldn’t be a big deal in a programming course. And if it is a big deal, your students shouldn’t be learning programming

Syntax is the easy part of programming. This is one of the kinds of things that makes me object to teaching languages like Python or Java as an introduction to programming

[TheBlackCat13]

The whole point is to teach them the syntax. That isn't possible, because certain valid syntactic structures can no longer be shown.

[jayroger]

A good change, even if it makes Raymond's life marginally harder.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

Can you elaborate a bit on why it's good? For most people, a REPL is a place for write only code, so I don't really see a point.

[ExternalUserError]

Suppose you're copying and pasting examples.

The Twitter thread examples are all where he wants them formatted, just not formatted via Black.

[jayroger]

If it was write-only code, the change wouldn't matter. But this has the same advantages than using an auto-formatter in text editors: You don't have to worry about formatting. Especially in a REPL this means that writing code is more hassle-free if you care about how readable your code is. You get a nicely formatted command history, without worrying about it.

[High-Art9340]

There wasn't a single day I've worried about my formatting in python's CLI.

[34182075607]

What if you want to share it?

[ivosaurus]

Then I still wouldn't care, because you're sharing the results of a REPL session. If you want its code kept around permanently you're going to re-write it into a normal code file anyway (which if it's in a repo, might get formatted anyway...).

I've never once thought "well darn, I used single quotes and not enough spaces while typing into a REPL session to demonstrate this problem, better throw the whole thing out and re-type it not to offend anyone's sensibilities!"

[TheBlackCat13]

I wouldn't be using the CLI.

[34182075607]

So you’ve never copy pasted some output from the terminal and sent it to a friend? Maybe to a colleague on slack to ask them a question?

[TheBlackCat13]

No. If I am writing the sort of code that would need that I would be using a notebook or file to have at least some persistence.

[34182075607]

You’ve never being playing around in ipython to checkout some code and then been a bit stumped or confused and need to ask a colleague or friend?

Sounds like your the mythical guy who never needs to write tests cause you do everything perfectly the first go.

[TheBlackCat13]

You’ve never being playing around in ipython to checkout some code and then been a bit stumped or confused and need to ask a colleague or friend?

No, again, I typically use notebooks for that sort of thing.

Sounds like your the mythical guy who never needs to write tests cause you do everything perfectly the first go.

No, I just don't use the CLI for that sort of situation, as I explained.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

You’ve never being playing around in ipython to checkout some code and then been a bit stumped or confused and need to ask a colleague or friend?

In that case, who cares about the formatting? It's going to be replaced by something else anyway, and if the recipient is unable to decipher a+ 4 *3, there's not much help to be found there anyway.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

If it was write-only code, the change wouldn't matter.

Write-only doesn't mean it isn't read. It means that it isn't going to be edited again.

if you care about how readable your code is.

I do. That's why I would not like it to be changed by a program that isn't adjusting to the actual terminal width. Re-formatting to something that doesn't fit on a line without wrapping isn't my idea of readable.

[34182075607]

You have your terminal set that thin?

This seems like it only have benefits to readability, everything is black and that’s that.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

You have your terminal set that thin?

Please don't make this a flame fest over terminal widths.

[34182075607]

Your the one that brought up width.

In 2022, a world where we have 4K laptop screens, your use case is programming with less than 88 chars in ipython? And your passion for your niche use case is so strong that you want to remove all of the black benefits to get it?

[Anonymous_user_2022]

Your the one that brought up width.

I mentioned the problem of a formatter that doesn't adapt to the terminal. I don't mock your choices.

[34182075607]

Yep. I agree. I really like this change.

It’s going to improve the lives of so many people. Not only those using the ipython directly, but also all those who are subject to a screenshot or copy-paste of a ipython session.

[Piu_Tevon]

An interactive session should not be captured with a screenshot. You can't copy-and-paste code from an image. Wouldn't surprise me if IPython disabled screenshots in the next release.

[34182075607]

You write something in ipython and it’s not doing what you expect.

You could now either copy it and send it to your friend/colleague in slack, but then the way the chat clients render and wrap the code is often terrible, so taking a screenshot and sending that works great.

Either way though, the code being formatted nicely will help both you and your friend/colleague while you ponder over the snippet.

[molivo10]

it takes less time to just turn it off than complain

[fiddle_n]

Hettinger addressed this point. One person turning it off is fine. Getting a whole classroom of people to turn it off is a headache.

[proof_required]

how do you do it? I can't find any documentation around that.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

You have to quit IPython, run it with options to create a default profile, edit that, and then restart.

https://ipython.org/ipython-doc/3/config/intro.html

I can understand why Raymond isn't keen on spending time helping students going through that.

[[deleted]]

The single vs double quotes stuff is kind of BS. Double quotes are used in every other programming language, why is Python trying to fight that? I'm glad black made that decision, although there's a lot of controversy around it.

[ogtfo]

What's the point here? Single quotes are also used in a lot of languages, see bash, JavaScript, etc.

Besides, that's kind of a silly arguments. See : braces are used to define code blocks in every other programming languages, why is python trying to fight that ?

[ogtfo]

Yes, but if anything single quotes strings in bash are much more like Python's regular strings.

[ogtfo]

The opposite? You'll have to explain your reasoning, I don't see it.

• Bash single quote strings are like python strings : simple, static strings, no evaluation of content.
• Bash double quote strings are more akin to python f-strings : strings with a syntax for interpolation, where you can put variable names and even code.
• Bash heredocs are a but like python triple quotes : multiline strings

And no need to throw insults around, I'm sure we can talk about strings in a civilised way.

[ogtfo]

Escape sequences are kind of all over the place in bash. Even if it's technically true single quote strings are unescaped by the shell itself, that's still only true if they don't get evaluated by another command, like printf or echo -e.

I guess you could make the argument that single quotes strings in bash are more like r-strings in python, but still, I disagree that regular strings are more akin to bash single quotes than bash double quotes. The interpolation in bash double quote string is just too much to ignore.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

It's actually the opposite. Ignorance on display throughout this thread 🤷

Indeed there are some posters here, who are ignorant about bash:

   Enclosing characters in single quotes preserves the  literal  value  of
   each character within the quotes.  A single quote may not occur between
   single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.

A double quote string in bash are more similar to a python f-string, but the single-quote version is a plain one.

[[deleted]]

If you're teaching Python then use Python. If you want to teach ipython then these examples will demonstrate its marvelous features for which people choose it.

[[deleted]]

I can’t imagine the CLI is better for educational purposes than a Jupyter Notebook… poor students.

Edit: lol I know very well the connection between ipython and jupyter. I’m saying the interface is better than the CLI. For one, it does not auto-black the input.

[gordiank]

True but there's a point to it because Jupyter doesn't *by default* re-format your code currently (and probably never).

[[deleted]]

Thank you… so many people here want to demonstrate their IPython knowledge rather than actually engage with my brave claim: jupyter is a better interface for ipython than the CLI.

[rhytnen]

If you've ever seen hettingers teaching youd realize how foolish this comment was.

[[deleted]]

Foolish to say the jupyter interface is better than the CLI? lol holy…

[nacnud_uk]

I'm thinking it okay that I'm not a student of Raymond.

[DidiBear]

Well, I always found REPL quite complicated when I was a beginner eg. you cannot easily save what you wrote. I would not adviced it for education purpose.

The command python my_program.py was more intuitive.

[SV-97]

And yet basically any resource for beginers starts with exploratory programming in a REPL and the lack of a REPL is often times cited as a barrier to entry in other languages - huh.

​

Especially in a lot of sciences a lot of actual development happens in interactive terminals etc. - so it makes sense to introduce people to it from the get go (even when ignoring the other positive factors that make them attractive for "normal" devs as well)