On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:05:08 +0000, kj wrote: > ... I find that the processing of > abstracting out common logic often results in code that is harder to > read ...
Yes. There is often a conflict between increasing abstraction and ease of understanding. [...] > The implementation is still very simple, but maybe not very clear, > particularly to programming novices (docstring omitted): > > def _binary_search(lo, hi, func, target, epsilon): > assert lo < hi > assert epsilon > 0 You're using assert for data sanitation. That is a very bad habit for you to be teaching novices. Your code will fail to behave as expected whenever the caller runs Python with the -O switch. [...] > My question is: is the business with sense and cmp too "clever"? For production code? Maybe -- you would need to profile the code, and compare it to a less general, more simple-minded function, and see which performs better. If there is an excessive performance penalty, that's a good sign that perhaps you're being too clever, too general, or too abstract -- or all three. Too clever for novices? That depends on how inexperienced they are -- are they new to Python or new to programming in general? Are they children or adults? Do they have a PhD degree or are they still at primary school? It depends on their experience and their intelligence -- dare I say it, some people will *never* get programming, let alone code-reuse. It also depends on how you lead up to it -- are you dropping them straight into the abstract code, or giving them two pieces of nearly the same code and showing them how to pull out the common functionality? -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
