On 2011-08-12, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> wrote: > Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> writes: >> I am pretty sure Python is a pretty nice language. However, the >> indentation thing has screwed me a few times. Furthermore, I know >> people who like Python a great deal and acknowledge, without much >> difficulty, that the indentation thing has caused problems or >> incompatibilities for them.
> Yes. It's caused problems for me too, so I'm not going to deny that. > This is different from saying ???indentation as block structure??? is a > problem; that statement is what I disagree with, and what I think most > respondents who disagree with you are objecting to. See below; I think I agree with what I meant by it, and disagree with what you seem to interpret it as. Your interpretation makes as much sense as mine, so far as I can tell. > I don't see anyone making the denials you're referring to there. If I > did, you would have my support in considering those denials mistaken. I suspect, thinking about it more, that it's a communications problem. > Likewise, ???end of line as end of statement??? has caused me and many > others problems. I'd go so far as to say that any Python programmer for > whom that's not true has not done any significant Python programming. > That doesn't make ???end of line as end of statement??? a problem. True, although it does make it a thing which *has* at least one problem. > If a language feature is beneficial in far greater proportion to the > inconveniences of that feature, I'd say that feature *is not a problem* > for users of that language. I wouldn't. Lemme give a concrete example, from C, since that's the language I know best. There are sound technical reasons for which C lets you manipulate pointers. If you couldn't, it wouldn't be C, and you couldn't do the bulk of the stuff that makes C useful. But... Pointer manipulation leads to crashes. LOTS of crashes. I have never met a C programmer with over a day or two of experience who has not had a program crash due to some mishap involving a pointer. When people say that a language like, say, Java, is trying to solve the problems of C's pointer system, I think that's a reasonable thing to try to do. There are tradeoffs. But it would be, IMHO, silly to claim that there are no problems with pointers; there are just benefits which outweigh them *for the things the language is trying to do*. -s -- Copyright 2011, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated! I am not speaking for my employer, although they do rent some of my opinions. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
