On May 25, 3:14 pm, John Bokma <j...@castleamber.com> wrote:
> Ethan Furman <et...@stoneleaf.us> writes:
> > Terry Reedy wrote:
> >> On 5/25/2011 8:01 AM, John Bokma wrote:
>
> >>> to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
> >>> than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
> >>> Perl and moving on?
>
> >> [you meant 'than Perl'] You are one of the people whose brain fits
> >> Perl (or vice versa) better than most. So enjoy it. Ignore anyone
> >> who says otherwise.
>
> > +1
>
> > If everybody's brain worked the same, we wouldn't have so many
> > different languages to choose from.
>
> So, this means that in general language readability is not as clear cut
> as some seem to advertise ;-).
>
I only know a tiny bit of Perl but I think you may
prefer it because it gives you some advantages in
short term but you have to pay more than it's
worth (arguably) in the long term. When you sit
down to write a new program, it's easier to do
than in python because it's quicker to type and,
of the proverbial "many ways", you chose the ones
that suit your taste better.
However, when you sit down to read someone else's
code, it's harder to read because you don't know
the intent of their authors. If they had different
taste for idioms or formatting style than you do,
you will chalk it up to them being bad programmers
and having bad coding or formatting style, so it's
not perceived as a perl's failing.
Python way has more of an emphasis on everyone
agreeing on some preferred, standard idioms so
that everyone can pick up each others' code
quickly.
Similarly, when we write in english, we have
conventions of, for instance, capitalizing at the
start of a sentence and having a period at the end
of it, and following rules of grammar. However, if
I'm writing notes for my own use, I might write:
similarly when we write in english we have
conventions of eg capitalizing at start of
sentence and having period at the end &
following rules of grammar but since i'm
writing for my own use maybe it's easier to
write in lower caps and use 3 spaces at the
end of sentences, since no-ones has to read
it but me?
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