J Kenneth King wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> writes: > >> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:20:21 -0500, Steve Holden wrote: >> <snip>
>>> Hear, hear! >> That's all very well, but some languages and techniques encourage the >> programmer to write bad code. > > That's just BS. > > Bad code doesn't just write itself. Programmers write bad code. And > ignorance is not an excuse. > > Just because a language allows a programmer to write sloppy code doesn't > put the language at fault for the bad code programmers write with it. Okay, as long as you realize the corollary of your argument is: It is impossible for a language to encourage programmers to write good code and promote good programming practices by design. I'm not sure that's entirely true either. I think python's "one way to do something" design philosophy goes some way toward that, as does Smalltalk's enforced message passing. I think PHP's superglobals and namespacing encourage bad practices (or used to back in the day), as do Basic's GOTO and Ecmascript's prototype overriding. Surely a language CAN be said to encourage kludges and sloppiness if it allows a good way and a bad way and makes the bad way much easier to implement or understand for noobs. Roger. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
