Re: Python (was Re: I did not inhale)

On 28/08/2024 21:27, Bart wrote:

On 28/08/2024 19:48, David Brown wrote:

On 28/08/2024 19:43, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com wrote:

On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 21:34:54 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 27 Aug 2024 11:26:18 +0100, Bart wrote:
>

(2) You want to temporarily comment out an 'if' line so that the
following block is unconditional. You can't do that with also
unindenting the block.

>
In Emacs, I have commands defined to adjust the indentation of the
selected region. Surely any other decent editor would offer the same.

>
Writing editor editor macros in order to work around fundamentally bad
language design is not something a programmer should have to waste time on.
>
>

>
I don't know about Emacs, but in most editors the way you indent a block of code is to select the lines, then press "Tab".  Unindenting is "shift-Tab".  Changing tabs to spaces or spaces to tabs is done by selecting "Tabs to spaces" from the Edit menu, or something equally simple and obvious.  Many editor can be set to convert tabs to spaces (or vice versa) when saving files, perhaps specific to the file type (so you don't muck up your makefiles).
>
It takes a special kind of genius to be able to program, and yet still have trouble with this kind of thing.

 The main problem isn't in changing the indentation of a block of code; it is in HAVING to do so because of poor language design.

If I am adding or removing blocks (such as surrounding existing code in a new conditional), then I /have/ to change the indentation - in /any/ language.  (I use indents in my assembly programming too.)  Call it OCD or compulsive behaviour if you like, but I cannot consider code to be finished - even to the level of a quick compile or test - if the indentation is not correct.
I simply cannot see the problem with Python here, because I would not indent things in any other way in any language.
The only thing I see as annoying in Python is when you have two or three indentations left hanging :
def foo(a, b, c) :
if a :
if b :
if c :
doThis()
That looks unfinished to me.  So I will add a "return" at the end (with a single tab indent, in this case).  If it is not the end of the function, I will sometimes use a "pass" to pull back the indent level.

A lesser one is having to rely on whatever varied features that 100s of different editors may have to do so.

I also rely on editors being able to accept keypresses, to load and save files, and to have features like "search".
Of course, being a sane software developer, I do most of my programming using editors that are suitable for software development.  Most professional carpenters use hammers for their nails, rather than bashing them in with stones - it's the same thing, really.

 And yet another, of more significance, if that after you've indented a block, it may now merge into an adjacent block that was already at that new indent. If you later need to revert that first block back to it's original position, you'd better make sure you mark that boundary.
 

So mark the boundary.  Add a blank line.  Put a comment line describing the steps of the function.  You are making up problems for which you already have good solutions that you would be using in any programming language.

It is a language design issue pure and simple. Don't try and pin it on the users and make out it's due to lack of expertise with their editors. Of course we can all indent blocks; it's just an unnecessary palaver.
 Clearly your point of view is as a language /user/ where languages and their characteristics are an invariant that you can't do anything about, can't change, and need to work around.
 But some of us devise (and, importanly, implement) languages of our own and can be more vocal about misfeatures in others.
 

Having made your own language(s) gives you no more and no less right to comment about features of other languages that you like or dislike.
Your problem here is that you are obsessed with finding things that you want to see as misfeatures, design flaws, or problems in other languages - and then obsess about how you can find new ways to make it more difficult to "work around" them.
Don't you ever just accept that a language is the way it is, and it is perfectly useable that way?  Or think that perhaps other people in the world know better than you do about how they want their language to work?  Has it never occurred to you that the people behind a given language - such as Python - considered various alternatives and decided that making it the way they did was the best choice overall for the language they wanted?
As Bjarne Stustroup said, there are two kinds of programming languages - those that people complain about, and those that no one uses.