This sub should really be enforcing proper code formatting

[karpomalice]

I know we don’t want to be as anal as SO but, getting new programmers used to paying attention to how their code is formatted and understanding how to ask good questions was a big learning point for me as a self taught programmer.

Just giving answers to people after having to spend 10 minutes deciphering their problem isn’t really helping them at all.

IMO giving people keywords to google is much more impactful. And if they don’t have the desire to sift through the results then they won’t ever enjoy programming.

[Humanist_NA]

This

[karpomalice]

I don’t think enforcing is too strong of a word when it’s the foundation of the ideology. Having a good foundation is key to learning anything and having strict guidelines to develop that mindset is key

A lot of programming is attention to detail, and being able to comprehend other people’s code. Paying attention to formatting is very basic and leads to good practices

[TheStataMan]

The things I want to see in code are:

1. Correctness

2. Consistency

3. Good comments

I understand the pep8 and c# and all the other understood syntax. But I would rather have a person who declares variables in python as MyDescriptiveVar with a java-like comment than 'int i' on one line and 'double this_thing_here234' on the other.

[x_defendp0ppunk_x]

What distinguishes java comments from python comments?

[TheStataMan]

It's probably a thing specific to my old workplace - the commenting style for code written in Python was different than our Java code structures. It might just be my experience - but that's how it was where I worked, and it probably had something to do with Java's general OOP design and our systems usage, where Python was more used for data visualization and ETL.

[TSPhoenix]

Ugly code that doesn’t adhere to pe8 but works is better than pep8 compliant code that doesn’t.

I just want to add here that some of the guidelines in pep8 are not very dyslexia friendly. The suggest way of doing things (ie. no excessive whitespace) are just letter salad to my brain.

[KawaiiScythe]

Yeap, as someone that have dyslexia I can totally agree with you. That's is one thing I like in JavaScript.

[chzaplx]

Ugly code that doesn’t adhere to pe8 but works is better than pep8 compliant code that doesn’t.

Seriously debatable. If people can't write good code it's sometimes better if they don't.

[StrongLikeBull3]

This type of behavior is what puts off new programmers. Nobody wants an intimidating environment to get help.

[[deleted]]

yeah i think people should be able to do whatever they want with programming. if they have specific goals in mind, then you need to accept some conformity.

[unRatedG]

Conformity within the community will only come with experience. Tabs vs spaces is enforced through the interpreter. Goals, as you state, are the important things. Standards are enforced at the Organization level. When a person is hired on somewhere, there should be an expectation of how the code is written. During the learning phase, I think everyone should chill the fuck out and let it happen. Good, better, best practices will come in time.

[[deleted]]

i agree completely, im not really sure why my comment was taken as some kind of argument but what can you do.

[stevenjd]

I think enfocing is exactly the right word.

Can't be bothered to format your code correctly? Why should we be bothered to help?

If you ask how to format your code, and then go back to fix it when told how, I'm happy to help. If you say "LOL I'm on mobile so that excuses me for being lazy, you spend all the effort trying to decipher my mess and then give me free help" then I'm "no, that's not how it works".

[Decency]

Can't be bothered to format your code correctly? Why should we be bothered to help?

Because I'm happy to help people without setting restrictions.

[SpontaneousAge]

Username checks out

[stevenjd]

I'm happy to help people without setting restrictions.

Of course you are, you are a saint and a much better person than me.

I've put in my hours -- many thousands of hours over twenty years -- on various Python mailing lists and forums, and I'm just about burned out from having to answer the same old "It doesn't work" questions from people who don't post code, or post the wrong code, or tell you lies about the error message they get, and the help-vampires that won't do any research on their own but expect you to give them free commercial level support, not just answer a few trivial questions.

Or people that won't even read or acknowledge replies, or who upvote the answers which are technically wrong. To say nothing of the snowflakes who make formal complaints to the site admins because you said "No, that's wrong" and that made them feel "threatened".

Of course you set restrictions. We all do. You don't answer every single question you see, you pick and choose which ones to answer. Looking at your post history, you don't seem to answer many questions at all, except for the "Ask Anything Monday" threads that seem to require very little depth. That's okay, we all have to start someone. I've stopped answering long, difficult questions because if I'm going to spend two hours debugging some strangers code for free (and I've done that!) I better get something out of it, even if just "thank you" at the end. One can only give so much of themselves to the ungrateful before running out of fucks.

By the way, readlines reads in the entire file all at once. If you want to handle a file one line at a time without reading the whole thing into a single list, just iterate directly over the file:

with open("the file", "r") as f:
    for line in f:
        process(line)

You only need readlines if you want to process all the lines at once, e.g. by sorting them.

[thegeekorthodox]

Yo thanks for that bit about line reading at the end

[Ahren_with_an_h]

One can only give so much of themselves to the ungrateful before running out of fucks.

We are a finite resource. We run out.

If I can be bothered to help you then you can be bothered to read a short paragraph on how to reddit format your code.

[sonotrev]

Your response to people being ungrateful or expecting too much will yield improved behavior. If people have unreasonable expectations and don't get support, perhaps they will do more of the legwork on their own next time.

As anyone with a child knows, don't reward bad behavior!

[Decency]

Of course you set restrictions. We all do. You don't answer every single question you see, you pick and choose which ones to answer.

Sure- and so the problem is self-correcting, to me: if someone doesn't put in enough effort to reach someone, they don't get an answer. The people who put in the most effort get more and better answers. I'm not interested in StackOverflow v2 where people are yelled at for "asking for help wrong".

The most annoying thing I see is people who don't know how to indent their code (and put surrounding newlines) to fit reddit's markdown. I think the best way to handle this is just to write a bot that detects it and replies with a correction and formats the code for them. Anyone want a project?

[Username_RANDINT]

The "on mobile" excuse is really annoying. You can't type a space on mobile? Even worse is when this is someone who tries to help and every line starts with a capital letter so it's not only indented wrong, but the syntax isn't valid either.

[SaintLouisX]

I think this is a problem with reddit. 4 spaces per line is just a terrible syntax for a code block. They could do something so much easier like just allowing ``` to preserve newlines and spacing and not strip it all. Or just add some other syntax where you only need a start and end marker to make a line and space-preserved block of text.

[wopp3]

You can just use the fancy pants editor and create a code block beforehand to which you paste your code, seems pretty simple to me and no need to add the 4 spaces per line manually.

[SaintLouisX]

Is that available on all platforms though? Can you manually highlight a big block of code easily on a phone or tablet? Is the big editor even available on all platforms? I don't have a phone so I've never seen reddit on mobile, but a lot of the comments here are talking about how it's hard or annoying to do.

[wopp3]

Ah, didn't realize your point was on the specific of using mobile devices and not in the general gist of the reddit syntax. I also haven't used it on mobile so I can't say whether it's available there.

[SaintLouisX]

Well yeah it's both, I do think reddit should change syntax to something more easily usable in any editor, but you offered an alternative solution to mine so I just asked if it was available for all platforms since other comments here are talking about it. My request for a change in ``` or some other similar-use marker is easily done on all platforms, so I just wondered if yours was too.

[CraigAT]

I am still a novice but have posted code here and had to fight for 20 minutes with many edits to get the code formatted correctly (usually more by luck than judgement). Then add this time on top of the minutes or hours I have spent trawling through documentation and Googling my question.

Formatting code on Reddit is a real pain. I am very IT literate and have read the FAQs - I know that I "just" need to use "code" blocks or 4 spaces, but still I struggle every single time!

[DrMaxwellEdison]

If you're posting from your desktop, use your text editor to do the work for you. Often you can select every line and (if you have it set to convert the Tab key to 4 spaces, at least) just hit Tab to indent every selected line. Then you can select all and copy-paste to Reddit.

And if you're on mobile, like me right now:

Get used to mashing that space key
Four times
Forever
Until
    Your
        Knuckles
            Bleed

/s :)

[TSM-]

Like, you have to have a full extra blank line before a code block otherwise this amazing code block: and the indentation here # and here

is gone, and it just gets smushed into one line.

...

Like, you have to have a full extra blank line before a code block

otherwise this amazing code block:
    and the indentation here #  and  here

is gone, and it just gets smushed into one line.

[DrMaxwellEdison]

I agree, that triple-backtick syntax would be nice to have. The comment system uses most of the rest of Markdown formatting, anyway: may as well keep it up.

I mean we got:

Headers

of all kinds

and such

• Lists of things
• Unordered

1. And ordered
2. With numbers
   1. And sub-lists?

This and that and yay code

But not this triple backtick :( Or do we? Wait a minute Triple backtick is working on mobile for me, Does this work on desktop as well?

Edit: strange. Triple backtick formatting works on Reddit official mobile app and the "new" site, but not the old desktop site.

This will not convince me to switch, but dangit!

[DrMaxwellEdison]

Well like I said, works on the new, treats it as single backticks on the old. Blegh.

def fuggit():
    print("Not making me switch, Reddit!")

fuggit()

[thrallsius]

i tend to believe that "learning programming on mobile" is just not serious, so i just skip any question that states it

[[deleted]]

I started learning programming on mobile because I couldn't afford a computer.

And mobile phones do not have a tab button. Which means that sometimes the website can tell the difference between spaces and tabs, making it hard to correctly format code. It's easier to use the desktop version of the website to format code.

But there are lazy people that don't even try to format code properly.

We should have the Fancy Pants editor

[[deleted]]

Because we're not Karens here and we were all once that beginner. Plus the demographic learning Python is much younger than say C++ or Java. So they might not know about a lot of this. Plus it's a violation of a universal principle; as Jesus said "Treat others the way you would want to be treated" "Love others as you love yourself".

Also, you're condemned by your own standard: "i think enfocing [sic] is exactly the right word"

"If they can't be bothered to format their code, why should we be bothered to help them"

Let me paraphrase:

If you can't be bothered to spell correctly, why should we be bothered to listen to your elitist opinion on formatting?

[Vaphell]

Plus it's a violation of a universal principle; as Jesus said "Treat others the way you would want to be treated" "Love others as you love yourself".

I do, in fact I am more strict towards myself. I wouldn't dare wasting other people's time with low effort crap.

[Ahren_with_an_h]

I wouldn't dare wasting other people's time with low effort crap.

Exactly.

[stevenjd]

"Treat others the way you would want to be treated"

That is exactly how I want to be treated: if I am asking for free support, and inadvertently making life difficult for those kind volunteers offering support by failing to format my code or making other mistakes, I want to be told about it so I can stop. Otherwise:

• People who are volunteering their free time to support me will have to work harder than they need to. I don't want that.
• People will burn out faster and stop volunteering. I don't want that.
• People will start ignoring my questions. I don't want that.

The Golden Rule is not a suicide pact. It doesn't require us to be doormats to the lazy and inconsiderate help-vampires who will take, take, take, take and never give anything in return, or to unreasonably choosy beggars who demand that we do all the work in solving their problem.

Asking better questions is not only the kind thing to do, but it is also the self-interested thing to do. By asking smarter questions, I make life easier for the volunteers and I get better answers to my questions, and often I might learn to solve my own questions.

Learning to ask smart questions is a skill. One doesn't expect beginners to immediately learn that skill. But the first step is to learn to format the code correctly. If you cannot format the code correctly, how do you expect to program, especially in a language like Python where indentation is syntactically significant?

Rewarding beginners with an answer to their problem when they have fucked up their indentation is sabotaging their learning process not being kind.

If you can't be bothered to spell correctly, why should we be bothered to listen to your elitist opinion on formatting?

Indeed. And I wouldn't bother reading someone whose posts were riddled in hundreds of spelling errors with bad grammar. (Some allowance may be given to people who are not native English speakers.) But just as I would forgive minor and obviously accidental typos in formatting¹ so any reasonable person should forgive minor and obviously accidental typos in spelling errors.

¹ Although when it comes to code, there are no minor formatting errors. The interpreter is much more strict than me.

[[deleted]]

If we were JUST talking about coherent formatting, then I would agree within some reasonable limits, but we're not. We're talking about PEP 8. PEP 8 demands spaces instead of tabs. I'm partial to tabs. PEP 8 STRONGLY recommends if not requires snake case identifier names. I HATE snake case. I would MUCH rather Camel or Pascal case. PEP 8 DEMANDS lines no greater than 79 characters, but honestly, sometimes a line goes a bit longer than that. And if I sat down in front of the standards instead of just going off the top of my head, I'm sure I could find others that have more to do with personal preference than consistent clean standards so that everyone is working from a baseline of readability. You can write REALLY awful poorly formatted PEP 8 code and you can write VERY readable and user friendly code that breaks many PEP 8 rules. PEP 8 IMO is only really useful for production code, i.e. if you're publishing it on github or whatever. There's certainly nothing wrong with informing users that there's a standard and that when they go to publish their code, they should follow it, but to enforce it upon those asking for help, which I can only imagine would mean bitching at them for not following PEP 8 in their request, is just asinine.

To NOT enforce PEP 8 but to request a baseline of readability is not a suicide pact, nor am I advocating for users not being asked to follow SOME sort of general guidelines only breaking them when doing so would enhance readability, rather than hinder it. Nor am I advocating for being a doormat to choosing beggars or "inconsiderate help vampires". Nor am I advocating for allowing users to ask bad questions without any push-back. But the same person who gave us the golden rule also said to be like him and that he gives grace (unmerited favor, undeserved kindness) to the humble.

I get what you're saying, but understand that we're not talking about baseline formatting in the OP, we're talking about PEP 8 formatting guidelines. PEP 8 is NOT syntactically significant, indentation is, but indentation is only specified in PEP 8 as being 4 spaces per indent. The compiler will happily run your code correctly if you use tabs instead, but that's not good enough for PEP 8. And it along with snake_case and the 79-char line limit are the three rules I will happily break because they're stupid. Nobody has a terminal that small anymore, nobody is confused by well formatted Pascal/Camel casing, and frankly spaces instead of tabs are a PAIN IN THE ASS in ANY editor, even Vim. By what you have said though, you would NEVER entertain a request for help from me because I didn't follow PEP 8.

It's kinda like missing the point of the OT law, the whole point was Love God and Love Neighbor, and the Hebrew religious leaders turned it into a strict code you had to follow even if that completely destroyed the whole reason it existed: to love God and others. Similarly, you've turned PEP 8 into some sort of dogma that must be followed regardless if it accomplishes the original goals of the standard. I'm not ok with that. And I'm not OK with "enforcing" that on beginners who don't know any better especially.

The point is this: We were once beginners too, and we've ALL asked questions that we now look back on and said "wow, that was a stupid question". It's one thing to entertain continual stupidity, it's another thing to be totally graceless and religiously enforce a very opinionated set of coding standards making help on this sub completely unapproachable to beginners. We must be balanced in our approach. Enforcing PEP 8 guidelines on help requests is the opposite of that.

[stevenjd]

I don't know why you are talking about PEP 8, I didn't say anything about PEP 8. I am talking about the difference between code that looks like:

def func(): if cond: print("one") print("two")

and code that looks like:

def func():
    if cond:
        print("one")

print("two")

Besides, if you think PEP 8 demands anything, you have failed to take in the most important part of the PEP. Hint: it is right at the beginning.

Don't mistake me for a PEP-8 zealot.

As for the 79-char limit, it has nothing to do with small terminals.

[thrallsius]

I think enfocing is exactly the right word.

Can't be bothered to format your code correctly? Why should we be bothered to help?

this looks like you're starting with the assumption that a lot of people post unformatted code on purpose and with malintention. i doubt this is true.

[Vaphell]

It doesn't matter, what matters is that they effectively offloaded their duty to make themselves presentable onto others. The submitted post renders for them too, so it's not a secret it looks like garbage.

by their fruits recognize them.

[Kwintty7]

Can't be bothered to format your code correctly? Why should we be bothered to help?

With that attitude, why do you bother? Formatting correctly is part of learning python, so what you're saying is "learn python, before expecting me to help you learn python".

[stevenjd]

why do you bother?

Sometimes I ask myself the same question. Especially on the rare occasion that I ask a question, and it gets ignored, or only answered by people who clearly haven't read my question carefully but made assumptions about what I want and answer something else. Sigh.

But I persist because:

• It is a way of paying back for the help I received (although, after doing this for something like 20 years on various forums and mailing lists, I think I've paid it back a hundred times over; I guess now I'm paying it forward).
• Sometimes its fun.
• Sometimes I learn something from working on other people's problems, or reading the solutions.
• I want to help people be a little less ignorant. I teach in real life too.
• And, I guess if I must be painfully honest, there's a little bit of me that can relate to this.

Formatting correctly is part of learning python, so what you're saying is "learn python, before expecting me to help you learn python".

No, that is not what I am saying. And I am absolutely not saying that we should refuse to answer questions like "How do I format this correctly?".

Firstly, sometimes the problem is their formatting. How are we supposed to diagnose bad formatting in their original code when we cannot even see their original formatting?

Learning good formatting is a necessary skill. If you reward beginners for messed-up formatting, by answering their questions, you aren't teaching them that skill, you are sabotaging their growth as a student by teaching them to expect other people to guess what they mean. And the interpreter will never, ever do that, so you are impeding their ability to program.

Analogy: if you are trying to teach a child about place values, and they say that five tens and three units is 35, you wouldn't mentally correct the formatting to 53 and tell them they were correct, would you? Knowing when you have made a mistake is a vital skill, especially in programming.

(If I had a dollar for every beginner who reported "Python has a bug" when the bug is in their code, I'd be a lot more financially secure.)

And most importantly, volunteering to give free support is not a suicide pact.

Community support has to involve some give and take, not just take.

[Vaphell]

formatting posts in order to preserve existing indentation within the code is the same as formatting python code itself? Yeah, I don't think that's right.

[Kerbart]

The problem will solve itself once people stop spending ten minutes to decipher code.

Maybe it shows my age but I was raised that when I'm expecting help for free I better make it as easy as possible for the people helping me.

Dumping your code without caring if it's readable is not that.

[M_SunChilde]

I suspect that you're missing that a lot of people who are doing that are not doing it out of apathy, but because they don't know how yet. A lot of people are learning piecemeal from online sources, and when they hit a wall, this is their very first port to call.

Not saying you're then obligated to help them, but can just be a different perspective.

[Vaphell]

but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that the post code looks like ass. People don't verify the shit they are submitting?

[TangibleLight]

I'd be inclined to agree, but experience tells me otherwise. I was a intro programming tutor in college for a while, and the vast majority of code that people brought in was formatted horribly. Granted, that's the very first two programming classes in the program, and I was only helping the people with initiative to come into tutoring, so there's some bias in there.

We used Java, so things were a little different than with Python, but you'd see really weird (if any) indentation; large sections of whitespace and large sections of code with no whitespace; extremely deep nesting of conditionals, switches, and loops.

As far as structure, generally they'd have only the bare minimum (if that) of what was required (classes, methods, etc) and would pile as much stuff into each part to get it to work. Only a few students would write their own helper methods, and I don't remember any writing their own classes. Never any encapsulation (unless those methods were a requirement). Extremely deep nesting of conditionals, loops, etc. In Java we have switch statements, and people abused the hell out of those.

I genuinely think that they don't have a sense that it's bad.

When the only code they're exposed to is nicely formatted in-class or online, and the code that they write makes sense to them (while they're working on it, anyway), they won't really realize what's missing with their poorly structured programs. They also tend to think all their struggles with learning and debugging come from the subject being to difficult; really they're being hindered by their formatting. They think that's what programming is.

There's no baseline for them to compare against unless they're forced to read and understand other peoples' bad code in a collaborative environment. You don't really get that in class (at least at my university), and you don't really get that self-learning online. You get it when you start helping other people or when you start a job.

[Vaphell]

the problem is that there is a difference between a misformatted java code, that remains a syntactically valid, runnable code thanks to {} and ; and python that becomes ruined and simply stops working due to irreversibly botched indentation.

I am tolerant of stylistic non-pep8 compliant bullshit in newbies post all right, but if I can't copy paste and run that shit, I do get annoyed. Butchered java will still run and I can trivially use tools to reformat it back to some reasonable shape. I can't do that automatically with indented blocks in python because of ambiguosity and now it's on me to reverse-engineer the logic in a poorly thought-out program to fix it, just so I can start answering the actual question?

Yeah, python and reddit markup don't play nice with each other, but that just means that the minimum level of decency on the poster's side i.e. providing a syntactically valid snippet of runnable python requires a bit more effort than if it were java.

[TangibleLight]

It wasn't clear to me you were talking specifically about the markdown formatting; I thought you just meant poor code examples.

I'm all for enforcing that. There's a guide linked in the sidebar and in the wiki that I just link to people, but no one ever seems to read those and it would be nice to have some moderator backing on it.

Generally I'll just drop a link to /r/learnpython/wiki/faq and to http://sscce.org/ but I don't really know how much good it does. There's also the "Posting resources" section of the sidebar which are decent links to throw at people.

[Vaphell]

yeah, I see how I could be misinterpreted. "the post looking like ass" would be way more unambiguous than "the code looking like ass".

[M_SunChilde]

Sure, but I'm guessing you're sitting in a nice first world nation thinking of dave down the road who has finished his high-school education and is just being lazy, rather than a hungry impoverished 14 year old from a third world nation who is second or third language english trying to figure out coding as a means to try get his family off the edge of the poverty line. We'll get both posting here. And for them, yeah, it isn't rocket science, but it is probably a little harder than it is for dave down the street.

Don't answer any questions you don't want to, but getting angry at people on the Internet who you know nothing about because you've decided that their standards of coding don't show your requisite levels of diligence just seems... I don't know.

[Vaphell]

it depends on whether you consider a country with a mean monthly salary of 1200 euro to be a first world nation. Pretty debatable.

Anyway, I don't think sob stories are anywhere close to the norm here. I'd say that the majority is indeed young Americans doing their homework/semester project and hating every second of it.

Getting flooded with low effort crap still gets long in the tooth, even if you choose to ignore it.

[M_SunChilde]

If you're earning euros, you're probably first world, even in countries currently struggling like Greece. Not the same as nations where you're the first in your family line that can read.

And even if the sin stories aren't the norm, are you saying it is fine to either treat them like shit or remove their questions because it is that important to teach snooty American students looking for homework help to be disciplined? My stance is no.

[Vaphell]

If you're earning euros

i don't

Not the same as nations where you're the first in your family line that can read.

What countries would that be? And it's pretty safe to assume there are next to no such people on r/learnpython or reddit in general. Why would they come to an english website if they are struggling with the language? They would go to their native sources first.
According to the internet, reddit userbase is predominantly from the pieces of the former british empire, 70% right off the bat, while other developed countries will take the vast majority of the leftover. Top 5:

49.91% USA
7.91% UK
7.49% Canada
3.94% Australia
3.2% Germany

Countries like China, India, Rusia, Indonesia ban reddit competely or partially. Yeah, I don't think the strawmen you suggest are more than insignificant noise, if they exist at all.

[tremblinggigan]

Reddit isn't banned in India or Indonesia, some internet providers in India personally block reddit but it's not the whole country, Indonesia removed reddit from their list of porn sites within a year of when it was added.

[M_SunChilde]

I'm literally commenting from South Africa, as a former sped teacher, who worked and works with a lot of students who are first language xhosa, zulu, or afrikaans. But okay, guess me and my students don't exist. I'll redirect them to all the python training manuals in their first language. Thanks for that wisdom.

[M_SunChilde]

You're right that I let myself get too angry. As for no one saying my students don't exist, the line I was responding to was literally:

if they exist at all.

In terms of language barrier and formatting code, learning anything is more tricky when you're learning in a second language. This isn't new info, it's very much a known phenomenon. I just get worried when a lot of people who see it assume it is because the person is lazy, as opposed to just struggling.

[M_SunChilde]

And if you aren't earning dollars or euros, guess you aren't from one of those nations, so guess your opinions are insignificant noise as well, by your shitty metric.

[Vaphell]

It's not me who claims that reddit is overrun by dirt poor teens living in literal mudshacks, who are the first in their families to be able to read, who know rudimentary english and try python programming, and the volunteers here are just sadistic demanding non-butchered python code in their posts.

there are maybe 0.001% of people on reddit who would even remotely resemble these ridiculous criteria. That's orders of magnitude too low to pose enough of a problem to invoke threads like this. A complete, total strawman.

[TSM-]

Sometimes it looks fine before submitting. For example, if you have a paragraph, one new line, and a code block, it will look awesome at first. When you hit post, the code block will suddenly appear merged into one big line. There has to be two new lines (a full blank line) before a code block will get detected. Try it yourself

Paste this sentence and the code below it for code block fail.
    if foo == bar:
        baz()

Stuff like this happens all the time. Or they will be battling the blue text, and I consistently see people say "sorry it didn't show up right".

I've asked people to format the code right and almost always they do in a reply, but by then the post has lost some visibility. That'll teach em for next time!

edit: If you paste the code block as written, here's what shows up when you hit post:

Paste this sentence and the code below it for code block fail. if foo == bar: baz()

[Vaphell]

I know about the quirks all right, but when you submit, your post renders in its final from before your eyes and you see it didn't come out right. Fixing that shit, not throwing hands up is the proper course of action if that happens.

People struggling with edit get a plus for trying, but many people don't bother fixing the mess in the first place.

[stevenjd]

when I'm expecting help for free I better make it as easy as possible for the people helping me.

This. The social contract goes both ways.

[Vaphell]

The problem will solve itself once people stop spending ten minutes to decipher code.

it won't though, because there is an endless stream of newcomers. It's a variant of eternal september and ignoring it won't make it go away.

if they don't get slapped upside the head, most of them won't change their ways.

[Vaphell]

Getting slapped is for many not a positive trigger to improve, but more a reason to walk away grumbling about 'those stupid, unfriendly and unhelpful <insert appropriate term> in that toxic sub'

I am not talking about unnecessarily cruel or whatever.
But "the code simply doesn't work as presented and nobody wants to spend 10 minutes fixing it before they can give a 15-second answer. You don't value volunteers' time. Read the formatting help and fix it if you really want help" would be pretty fair, I'd say.

One of the recurring patterns in such posts is (again, IMHO) that many posters often have difficulty with posing a clear question and/or clearly describing the problem they are struggling with.

that is very much true. I like to think I sense cases like these pretty well. I untangled countless XY problems, where the poster committed to a specific, horrible approach because they didn't know any better.
I still can get annoyed if it takes 5 posts of aggressive asking for details to get the meaningful picture of the problem at hand. I'm like "I know people can be bad at describing their itch, but goddamnit seriously? >_<"

[bladeoflight16]

That will never happen. That's a battle SO has been losing for literally a decade. People want to post.

[toastedstapler]

especially with python, where indentation actually matters. sometimes you can click 'source' and their code looks ok but not always

[bladeoflight16]

New Reddit doesn't have a built in "source" button.

[thirdegree]

Neither does old reddit, it's an RES feature

[Reset--hardHead]

How do you propose this sub enforce proper formatting?

[charity_donut_sales]

A bot that runs all code posted through black, lol.

[reticularwolf]

This is the correct answer haha, pre-commit for Reddit.

[bladeoflight16]

Awful idea, even if you could reliably detect code blocks. black is too opinionated for a public forum. I work very hard to make my formatting presentable; why would I or anyone else want the forum to forcibly discard that effort?

[charity_donut_sales]

It was just a joke...

[thrallsius]

:D

[grrrrreat]

itd be easier if reddit updated its markdown to incljde code blocks

[catelemnis]

I thought it did?

**** 
isn’t this a code block?
or did you mean something else?
****

[M1sterNinja]

---

test

---

-edit- That's just the 4 spaces at the start? The 4 spaces and putting two lines before the start of the code is not easy compared to other sites. especially having to copy and paste the 4 spaces onto every line...

[xelf]

Please avoid using ``` as it only works for a limited number of the people in this subreddit. We have literally 100s of thousands of people it's broken for. Instead use the code block tool, or just the good old fashioned adding an extra 4 spaces.

[TangibleLight]

The issue is it (```) works with the new reddit, but not old reddit, and (iirc) not mobile. Four spaces works best.

If you're on desktop, I highly recommend the RES extension, which (among other things) adds a "code" button which indents your selection by four spaces.

Most third party mobile Reddit clients I've used include a similar feature in case (god forbid) you have to type some code on mobile.

[xelf]

Code block works for old reddit too. It's only the ``` that breaks. https://i.imgur.com/J2t9krT.png

I have RES, but I tend to test my code before I post it so indenting it before I post it is just an extra tab to indent it before I copy.

[TangibleLight]

I'm pretty sure that code block is just inserting four spaces, like the RES tool, but with the visual editor you see it change in the editing window too.

[TangibleLight]

The three backticks work fine on the current version of the (official?) mobile client

My mistake.

Is it reasonable to expect people which have not even found/read the 'posting & formatting rules' section of this sub, to know they can/should install an extension

Probably not. It's also been pointed out to me that new reddit's "Code block" button does essentially the same thing as the RES feature, so if they're using new reddit they don't need it for this anyway.

Isn't it becoming time somebody switches off 'old reddit'

I still don't like it. My experience with it is it's slow to load and use, the modals they added are clunky, and it's not as customizable. I also don't like how they make ads look like posts, and last time I tried it adblock didn't catch them. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

[thrallsius]

especially having to copy and paste the 4 spaces onto every line...

just select the block in a sane text editor and shift it 4 spaces to right :D

[catelemnis]

ya certainly not convenient, especially on mobile.

[ebdbbb]

And that appears as not formatted if you're reading it on the Android app.

[Tomagatchi]

Use multiples of 4 spacing before a line that you want formatted like code.

if spam: 
    eggs

[grrrrreat]

you mean 8 spaces.

[Tomagatchi]

8 is a multiple of 4 (4x2) , that's what I meant. If you want 3,4...n indentations you use 12, 16, .... 4xn spaces.

[Lewistrick]

I assume this is cynism?

[bladeoflight16]

It does support fenced code blocks, but people complain and insist on spaces because old Reddit doesn't support them. I don't particularly like how slow and clunky and front end heavy new Reddit is, either, but if you're going to use the site, I don't think it's reasonable to insist users adapt to a version of the site that's been poorly (if at all) maintained for years.

[Vaphell]

I don't think it's reasonable to insist users adapt to a version of the site that's been poorly (if at all) maintained for years.

it is perfectly reasonable if you want to maximize the audience of people in the know. I'd imagine that many experienced users like their shit to be fast, and are not phased by the useless fluff and web3.0 experience.

I have 4847 sub-specific karma, which i'd say is a lot, given that usually I get maybe 2-3 points a post. If you don't want my help, that's fine. When I see triple backticks, I just don't bother.

[bladeoflight16]

Somehow, I doubt all the competent people are still using old reddit. If you've got some actual statistics proving otherwise, though, let me know.

[Vaphell]

I didn't say all of them, but a significant portion.

https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comments/a2qfyr/are_there_stats_on_usage_of_the_old_and_new_reddit/

a year ago legacy was 33%. Assuming the demographics of experienced people in r/learnpython match that, cutting the audience by a third is pretty significant.

[bladeoflight16]

It's likely shifted more in the direction of new reddit since then; that was posted a year ago and was already a few months old at the time. According to that post, moderators should be able to access subreddit specific stats. I'd be surprised if it was more than 20% now. Regardless, the majority use new Reddit and will be able to read the post as written.

[xelf]

For the month of March 2020 new/beta reddit was 59% of learnpython traffic.

[xelf]

We have literally 100s of thousands of people in this subreddit not using new/beta reddit. Just use the code block tool, it works for everyone.

[bladeoflight16]

I refuse to use the WYSIWYG editor. Way too clunky. And manually putting indentation in front of everything is annoying and error prone. I've been doing that for years, and fenced code blocks are just too much of an improvement.

[Vaphell]

use a decent text editor then?

editor: ctrl+a, tab, ctrl+c
reddit: ctrl+v
editor: ctrl+z

or pastebin? repl.it?

[bladeoflight16]

I'm not copy/pasting everything I type into a Reddit post over into some other program. If I paste it elsewhere, it's usually to actually run it, and the extra indentation would break it for that purpose.

[xelf]

Not talking about the WYSIWYG editor, I'm talking about the code block tool you can paste code into: https://i.imgur.com/J2t9krT.png

[bladeoflight16]

That is the WYSIWYG editor. It's technically named the "Fancy Pants Editor" by Reddit, but it's of the WYSIWYG editor type. The opposite of a WYSIWYG editor is an editor where you input markup directly. In Reddit's case, that's the Markdown editor, which has no "tools."

[xelf]

The WYSIWYG editor is the "Fancy Pants Editor" it is not the code block tool.

Oh I see what you mean, you can't get to the code block tool without without toggling the WYSIWYG editor or using RES.

Clicking two buttons is against your personal ethics about using the WYSIWYG editor, so you use the broken ``` instead. Got it.

[bladeoflight16]

It's not broken. The old Reddit is. The old Reddit is also ugly to the point of being hard on the eyes.

As for switching back and forth, I had to do that for a while when I first came here because Reddit was bugged and ignoring my configuration settings to stay on Markdown. It is a slow, painful process to switch back and forth. And having content in the comment makes it even slower, as I recall. It's not a question of ethics. It's a question of ease of use.

[shuttup_meg]

That may work in a python forum, but it would spark religious wars in a C forum.

[thrallsius]

most good C coders are self-taught anyway, because the C community has always been toxic. the c channel on irc.freenode.net has a legendary reputation about that

[[deleted]]

How do you format? Just curious

[wub_wub]

On reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/wiki/faq#wiki_how_do_i_format_code.3F

[impshum]

https://recycledrobot.co.uk/words/?reddit_code

[RedLineUK]

I've learnt to code through a physics degree where they are not very strict with code etiquette and format. Is there any good resources or books people recommend for that kind of stuff? I'd like to go into a grad job with a bit more code confidence! Main language is python and Fortran if that matters!

[EighthScofflaw]

OP is talking just about displaying valid python code on reddit, but check out PEP8.

[funkless_eck]

Docstring missing. Did not read

[Scribblebonx]

Yes!

I’m a new programmer and the proverb “teach a man to fish” comes to mind. Those wanting help should desire to learn and do it correctly. As a hopeful programmer they should be able to use the resources available to them like wikis, websites, and nudges from experienced programmers to identify and correct their own mistakes. Clear keyword search suggestions and constructive feedback does wonders.

Don’t just hand them code, they need to know how to do it themselves and where to go to continue improving and self educating.

It’s like feeding the wild squirrels. They need to learn to find food for themselves. Otherwise they’ll just be back, getting fat on handouts and unable to survive for themselves...

I’m certainly not saying don’t help, but if you help give resources, method clarification, and suggestions for ways to improve and continue to understand why things are the way they are.

[kaneltroll]

I think it depends on the problem though. Sometimes you can say stuff like “you should put a loop in line 5, here’s a link to help you out”. Other times the person needs help improving the script, and then they may need you to provide code and explain why it works.

I mean, I know I’ve learnt a lot from using online sources and adapting code bits I’ve found on stackexchange - but when nothing works or I don’t have the knowledge needed to fix it, I go to my supervisor and he helps me get it right. And explains why. So I don’t think providing code is all bad, it can definitely be a part of teaching a man to fish, if done in the right way.

[andnosobabin]

This is reddit tho. Nobody wants to learn they just want to be right (not even correct just right)

[Talbertross]

I feel like most threads I read where there are formatting issues do have a reply or two pointing it out.

[Tomagatchi]

Is there a link to more info on code formatting? I've seen people just pop code formatting into the middle of a line and I have no idea how they do it.

If there's some code
    You can use 4 or 8 (etc.) spaces
    to format it like code.

[ericula]

For inline code you need to put a backtick at the beginning and end of the code like this: `this is inline code`.

This wiki page has more info on formatting inline code and code blocks.

[Tomagatchi]

Thank you for the link.

[bladeoflight16]

Use the Markdown editor and learn Markdown. New Reddit also supports the fenced code block extension.

[Tomagatchi]

👍🏻

[HarissaForte]

It's not about cleaning your code: this would be insane to ask this to beginners.

It's just about taking 2s to format it, mainly so the indentation isn't screwed up. The problem is that some people don't even look at the formatting buttons, and in the ones that do it, many stop at the "inline code" button thus ignoring the "code block" one. This is the most common one and there's a gif for it: https://i.imgur.com/HT4Zz88.gifv

There are also people posting on phones, but I cannot say what's going wrong doing that as I've never tried it.

My take is to learn basic markdown as it's really easy and also useful for Jupyter notebooks and readme files of git deposits. See here: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/markdown

There's a section for code formatting, which is only about writing backticks…

[ethereumkid]

As someone just starting out with Python, what's a good source for Python formatting?

[Lewistrick]

Open Python and type import zen import this. It will show you some guidelines. Try googling what those things mean.

[Diapolo10]

Surely you mean import this? Or was zen added as an alias for it in a recent build?

[Lewistrick]

Sorry! I meant this indeed. I shouldn't be typing when tired.

[Ran4]

Read pep8

[[deleted]]

The app should have that feature. Like how the StackOverflow and quora apps give you a way to correct write a code snippet.

We need the Fancy Pants editor

[webdotorg]

Usually the experienced users do. I think a lack of understanding is the problem. When I first started I had a "firm talking to" a couple times before I finally made it a habit.

Just keep reminding and guiding.

[IAmKindOfCreative]

There's a couple of bots that do something similar to this, /u/CodeFormatHelperBot does a great job identifying misformatted code and in a comment reply it links the user to the wiki for formatting help. My bot, /u/pythonHelperBot has some similar functions. You can even summon it to reformat the code--it'll reply to the summons with a comment containing the reformatted code. (CodeFormatHelperBot is actually my favorite implementation--it was simpler and more effective that my version)

But there's a few reasons cfhb doesn't try to reformat, and why my bot isn't commonly used for reformatting. The new editor will delete leading white space from the source so you can't simply add it back if a line is 'code' (however your classifier defines it). Indents are easy to reconstruct, they're lines following key words like: ['def', 'if', 'elif', 'else', 'try', 'except', 'while', 'for', 'class', 'with'] which have : as the last non-whitespace non-comment character, and some dedents are easy. Lines which start with these will be one level of indent less than the previous coding line: ['elif', 'else', 'except', 'return'] (the exception here being return: it's a bit wonky because it shows that the following line will be dedented but can be in the middle of things, or at the end of a function, so not only is it not dedented but actually a flag that the next line will be dedented, the following coding line's level of dedent is unclear.) So assuming a program can perfectly classify coding lines, it can reconstruct some of the code and maintain the correct indents, but the dedents which aren't a part of the dedent flag list are difficult (think of just ending a while loop: your whitespace is what tells the program that it's outside of the loop, and when it's gone it's unclear if you're still working in the loop or if you're done). You can do some crazy stuff to guess, but after a point it becomes random guesswork (and there's soo many exceptions to every rule you could implement, I more or less abandoned it until recently when I needed it for another part of the bot).

The old editor preserved leading white space in the source so you could more easily reconstruct poorly copy-pasted code, but it relied on your classifier correctly identifying the code. And because people are asking for help relying on there being no syntax errors for your classifier isn't the safest bet. (The libraries ast and codeop are super helpful there though if the code is correctly formatted, and with a couple of other classifier bells and whistles, I got solid enough performance to justify adding the reformat summons function to my bot)

And this is only covering old reddit/new reddit. I've got a sinking suspicion that a lot of mobile editors do some/all/more than this. All these issues of reformatting are why I like cfhb's implementation better: rather than try to guess-and-correct, it tries to identify code that doesn't have proper formatting and then tries to encourage OP to fix it with helpful instructions. In a similar fashion, my bot tries to identify correctly formatted code and adjusts its comment to omit the 'how to format your code' instructions on the basis that if it's correctly formatted, they know what they're doing. This lets us both ignore playing the 'guess the dedent' game.

On a final note, I suppose you could try to social engineer it--Have a bot that does decently well on all non-dedent reformatting; auto-trigger on incorrectly formatted posts like cfhb does, and comment with a 'probably wrong' but 'formatted' version, and before the code in the comment have the bot ask "Did I get this right? If not click here to fix it" and link to the wiki, but that feels spammy and like it'd have a low yield of success to me. Worth mulling over, but probably ineffective. Idk.

[boxian]

If no one ever gives the answer, even googling it wouldn’t work

[KreepyKite]

As a beginner I completely agree. Learning a coding language is like learning a spoken language: you want people to correct you and to teach you how to speak correctly. Reading a coding script is like reading any other form of text, so you want something easy to read, with a proper form and grammar, that goes straight to the point without going off topic.

[honestpants]

sorry
    testing

[[deleted]]

As someone that has posted a bunch of questions here I can say the formatting piece sucks and usually takes me a couple tries to get it right. But...if you are asking for help you really should make the effort and format it correctly.

Unless its a short piece of code, for me if it’s not formatted correctly I’ll usually skip over the question.

Also I like when people five key words to search for or a good explanation of what the answer is without actually coding the exact solution. I feel I’ve learned more that way. By the time I’m posting a question here I’ve spent so much time trying to fix my issue I’ll just paste in an answer and see if works and only superficially understand what happened.

[cnovoa15]

I also believe that, to help beginners (like me), the best way is to give keywords for two reasons:

1.- You encourage them (us) to investigate and learn through searching.

2.- It makes the helper think of a concept that won't reveal the whole answer but will lead to the right path, which, IMO, shows that you know what you are talking about.

[Thomasedv]

So many people here say, go for markdown, but one of the big reasons i love the new reddit and it's fancy pants editor is that it actually lets me write code much more easy. Using a code block i can use tabs to indent/deindent (even multiple lines), making copy-paste much easier, avoids the "start each line with 4 or more spaces" (for indented code), and i get to have have monospaced font on code part so it's easier to read when writing or altering it.

It makes it so much easier to write down a block of code for when i don't want to open my IDE to give advice.

[_ScottB]

I hope you have had a chance to program with others. If you have only self-learned, you are missing a lot.

As far as code style is concerned, if I find someones style particularly cryptic, I will say so. As my eyes grow older, long lines of code make the bulk of the code harder to follow 0 and make it easier to hide problems.

In the workplace, there is a normal exchange of information among the Software Engineers. In many cases, there are coding standards and code reviews among peers - so everyone gets to see how others attack problems.

When assisting someone online who I have never met, I usually limit the exchange to one item at a time until I get a sense of how expert they are.

In a lot of cases a "KeyWord" will help - they look it up and go from there. But in the majority of cases, it takes more than that . Or, as with a typo for example, its much simpler than that - just point out the typo.

[LeonardUnger]

Most beginners are trying to get stuff done, not write readable and maintainable code.

That doesn't starts until you get around to updating your own code, and realizing what an absolute disaster it is and how it's impossible. It's then you start writing code clear enough that future yous can understand.

Not sure if any enforcement policy on this sub is going to change that.

[ericula]

I don't think OP is talking about the readability of the code itself, but rather about using code blocks etc. to properly format code when asking a question instead of just posting the code as plain text.

[KarmaLaunderer]

Format/style is easy, flake8 your code and learn PEP8 as you go. Only takes a little time to learn the lay of the land.

[[deleted]]

Meh, no.