On Friday, January 29, 2016 at 2:49:24 PM UTC-6, sohca...@gmail.com wrote: > I'm convinced that anyone who actually prefers Perl's > syntax over Python is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. > > [...] > > Readability counts. I'd say readability is one of the > most important features of a language, as you will read > your code far more than you write it. Perl is not > readable. I don't care how powerful your language is if > you can't read it.
EXACTLY! Which is the same reason why natural language is bound by many structural rules. For instance: we utilize "syntactical structures" like sentences and paragraphs to create "comprehensible groupings", and we *NEVER* want to arbitrarily, or randomly, use more than one space between words, or more than one line between paragraphs. STRUCTURE IS IMPORTANT! And the only thing more important than a "self-imposed structure" is a steadfast adherence to the "collective style guides" of written communication. When we *ALL* utilize a familiar structure, we will *ALL* spend less time *CONSCIOUSLY INTERPRETING* superficial structural details, and more time *ABSORBING* the actual meaning of the content. ABSORPTION IS THE GOAL, NOT ABERRATION! The goal of written communication is no different than any other technology. We should strive to abstract away as much as possible to the sub-conscience processes of our mind as we can, so that we can target our mental focus purely on the comprehension of content, *NOT* comprehension of structure! When faced with an unfamiliar "syntactical structure", our high level focus becomes "mired in the minutiae of the superficial". EVEN WHEN NECESSARY, THE SUPERFICIAL IS NOT IMPORTANT! The goal of communication should never be (either intentional or not) to distract or impress our readers with our capacity to create "self-aggrandizing ornateness of structure", which will undoubtedly obfuscate the intended message, no, but to *STRICTLY* follow the collective standards and practices of "acceptable syntactical structuring" that will *facilitate* a smooth transition between: ideas that are codified into symbolic languages, and the translation of those linguistic symbols into concepts in the mind of the reader. ABSTRACTIONS ARE VITAL TO OUR COMPREHENSION OF COMPLEX COMMUNICATION MEDIUMS! For communication to function (at it's most basic level) these abstractions must exist simultaneously in our codified symbolic languages *AND* in our mental processes that interpret them. But whilst our mental abstractions are mostly unconscious, they can become disturbed when dissonance is injected into symbolic languages in the form of "poor syntactical structure". Break either link in the chain, and a "smooth transition of ideas" becomes untenable. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
