On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 5:10 AM <2qdxy4rzwzuui...@potatochowder.com> wrote: > > I would say that expressiveness is how *directly* you can translate your > ideas into code, and how *directly* some one else can see your original > idea by reading your code.
Yep, how directly or how accurately. > So when I say something like "create a new list in which each value is > double the value in the current list," that translates to relatively > idiomatic Python like so: > > new_list = [] > for value in current_list: > new_list.append(2 * value) # or maybe value + value; YMMV > > Or even: > > [ 2 * value for value in current_list ] > > In Lisp, it might look like this: > > (mapcar #'(lambda (value) (* 2 value)) current_list) > > Unless you're familiar with Lisp (or Lisp-like languages), and > comfortable with high order functions (which many/most beginners aren't, > although most Lispers are), it's a lot harder to see the idea in the > code. One thing worth noting is that your mental pseudo-code is affected by the languages you're comfortable with. You said: > create a new list in which each value is double the value in the current list which clearly and obviously translates into a list comprehension. But what if you instead thought of it as: > double every value in this list ? That would translate far more obviously into an imperative construct that doesn't really work in Python, but imagine that we had reference variables: for &value in list: value *= 2 So the expressiveness of a language isn't a fixed quantity, but it depends on the programmer. And it can change as you learn and adjust, too. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
