Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On Mon, 8 Apr 2024 08:20:37 -0700, John Ames wrote:

... compulsively indenting and
splitting across lines can get out of hand, too. It seems to me that a
lot of people in this age of "cinematic" aspect ratios and super-sized
displays in personal computing forget that eye-travel isn't free, and
spreading information across maximal space can make it *harder* to keep
track of context.

There it is again: “maximal space”. The “space” is there to be used.
Code may be one-dimensional, but you have a two-dimensional screen to
display it, why not make use of that, if it makes a complex structure
clearer?

Another example:

def fill_in_depreciations(tax_year) :
    "(re)inserts depreciation entries for the specified tax year," \
    " based on currently-entered assets."
    sql.cursor.execute \
      (
        "delete from payments where kind = %s and tax_year = %s",
        ["D", tax_year]
      )
    for \
            entry \
        in \
            get_each_record \
              (
                table_name = "assets, asset_depreciations",
                fields =
                    [
                        "assets.description as description",
                        "assets.initial_value as initial_value",
                        "assets.when_purchased as when_purchased",
                        "assets.depreciation_rate as rate",
                        "assets.depreciation_method as method",
                        "asset_depreciations.depreciation_amount as amount",
                    ],
                condition =
                    "assets.asset_id = asset_depreciations.asset_id and"
                    " asset_depreciations.tax_year = %s",
                values = [tax_year]
              ) \
    :
        sql.cursor.execute \
          (
                "insert into payments set when_made = %(when_made)s,"
                " description = %(description)s, other_party_name = \"\","
                " amount = %(amount)d, kind = \"D\", tax_year = %(tax_year)d"
            %
                {
                    "when_made" : end_for_tax_year(tax_year) - 1,
                    "description" :
                        sql_string
                          (
                                "%s: %s $%s at %d%% from %s"
                            %
                                (
                                    entry["description"],
                                    entry["method"],
                                    format_amount(entry["initial_value"]),
                                    entry["rate"],
                                    format_date(entry["when_purchased"]),
                                )
                          ),
                    "amount" : - entry["amount"],
                    "tax_year" : tax_year,
                }
          )
    #end for
#end fill_in_depreciations