Using VisualStudio/MonoDevelop and C# I rarely need to look at the documentation because I can quickly see what a method accept and returns. And when I need to pass flags or options, enums are much more neat and encapsulated.
With Python I'm constantly looking at the documentation when surfing a library. I personally like the terse code and abstraction features of Python which is making me slowly writing more and more tools in it. Still, I have to agree that there are edges (like these) that must be sharpened out...
On 7/24/06, paul kölle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
> In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Yacao Wang
> wrote:
>
>> However, type signatures are not only a kind of information provided for
>> the compiler, but also for the programmer, or more important, for the
>> programmer. Without it, we have to "infer" the return type or required
>> agument types of a function, and this can't be done without seeing the
>> implementation of it,
>
> That's what documentation is meant for. If you are forced to look at the
> implementation, the documentation is bad.
I think the OP refers to reading the *code*, the documentation might not
exist (yet). Sometimes I feel python is easier to write than to read and
missing argument type declarations (just for documentation purposes)
are IMHO one reason. Another are missing (optional) argument type
checks at runtime. Something like WrongArgumentType exceptions instead
of rather unspecific AttributeError from deep inside the code would be
very convenient.
Yes docstrings are nice but sometimes a simple:
foo(int:param1, string:param2) is way better than:
foo(param1, param2):
"""
@type param1: integer
@type parame2: string
"""
cheers
Paul
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