On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 23:18 -0800, Doug wrote: > Michael Hobbs wrote: > > I think the colon could be omitted from every type of compound > > statement: 'if', 'for', 'def', 'class', whatever. Am I missing anything? > > > > Thanks, > > - Mike > > It is a very good idea as the colon is technically redundant (not > necessary for parsing, aside from one liners) and actually hurts > readability (and writeability). The "evidence" people cite for the > advantage of using a colon is research done by users of the ABC > language, python's predecessor. They forget that A) that was like 20 > years ago,
Research being old does not automatically invalidate it. Old research is invalidated by newer research that invalidates it. > B) the language was designed for children, http://www.cwi.nl/archive/projects/abc.html does not mention children: "Originally intended as a language for beginners, it has evolved into a powerful tool for beginners and experts alike." > and C) the > keywords in ABC are IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS (hurting readability and > writeability) and thus adding a colon obviously helps restore some > readability for users in that case but not in python's. So what are you saying? In a programming language that doesn't use all caps keywords, adding colons to block-beginning lines hurts readability, or it doesn't add any readability? In any case, that's an assertion that should be backed up by citing relevant research. > However, python is far too old to accept any fundamental changes to > syntax at this point. The source code for Python is openly available. If you are so convinced of the added readability from removing the colons, do the world a favor and make the necessary change, or hire somebody to make the change, to Python. -Carsten -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
