On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:57:00 +0300, Ciprian Dorin, Craciun wrote: > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 2:14 AM, Dan Sommers <somm1...@bellsouth.net> > wrote:
>> Also from the Zen: flat is better than nested. One of the aspects of >> flatter call trees and object hierarchies is that I hit the bottom >> (language features or the standard library) sooner, and I "should" >> already have the language and its standard library in my brain. That >> said, I also tend to break my programs into layers, but I do try to >> make each layer as thin as possible (but no thinner). > > I agree with your opinion about keeping the abstraction layers > shallow, but in my view high-order and helper functions do not comprise > a new abstraction layer. For example in Lisp, using map, reduce (fold), > or any other high-order function is just like using for, or while in a > normal imperative language. If I hit a call to map or to reduce, I've hit the bottom: map and reduce are defined by Lisp and not by the programmer. > And also I would like to point out that "hitting the language > sooner", means to know every function in the standard Python library > (which is by far uncomprehensible, its huge) and most of the times you > also need the documentation. And if we go this path, when debugging we > could use a smart IDE, which should show as tool-tip-text for function > names their documentation, and in this way all we have to do to > understand a particular function is just to point it out. Although huge, at least the standard Python library is *bounded* (even if only within a given release). The more I use it, the better I know it, and there's probably an 80/20 rule in there somewhere (if I concentrate on programs in my particular area(s) of interest, there may even be a lurking 90/10 rule). Maybe I don't know the Standard Patterns well enough (I still speak OO as a second language), but even when I see something as apparently clear as add_listener(f), I have to wonder about the specific semantics of your particular add_listener function. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
