"Fredrik Lundh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Simo Melenius wrote: > > Sure, but mental pollution counts too IMO. What you write and what you > > read must go through your brain, including dummy variables. And next > > you start thinking how to "hide" it from your own mind (e.g. naming it > > "_my_local_func" or something as ugly as the leading underscores in > > it). > use something short, like "f". hopefully, a single character won't overload > your brain.
I've heard some brain can tackle even Java's overly verbose syntax, it just depends on one's mind set how the verbosity is perceived: some find it a disrupting must, some like spending time writing things for which another programmer would've written a code generator by now. Elaborating more: Yes, naming functions that are only used once is minor nuisance (but still something I hope to get rid of eventually). In a level, it's probably similar to how whitespace at the end of the lines bogs some people -- that stuff just doesn't need to be there, so the text feels cluttered. (For _that_, Emacs luckily has its whitespace mode.. :)) *** Like someone pointed, using _ is a good convention for throwaways. The fact that such a convention exist just emphasizes that it _is_ an issue from which people try to sway away. > > And I think that it does, in fact, touch the innermost symbol table > yes, but the overhead of keeping a local slot updated is very small, Sure; though I considered it more of a conceptual issue rather than a performance one. br, S -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
