[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Chris Mellon wrote: > >>Any time you want to write something in any way other than the obvious >>way, ask yourself why? Is it more obvious *to you*, which is a good >>reason as long as you're only writing code for yourself? Or is it just >>to be different, or because you think it'll be faster, or just because >>the slickness of it appeals to you? >> > > The point is again, "obvious" is not so obvious sometimes. You seem to > be assuming that anyone that use style different from you is > intentionally doing it and that your style would first come to their > mind but they don't use it, for the sake of proving that they are > smart.
My take on it is that "obvious" is intended to be prescriptive, not descriptive. (Note that in the Zen it is phrased "There *should* be ...".) It describes what Python aspires to, not what it is. If the currently preferred method is not "the one obvious way", steps should be taken to make the preferred way "the obvious way" (i.e. the way that you reach for first, when you want to "do it"). Keep in mind that the Zen was written at a time when there was a certain amount of "Perl vs. Python deathmatch" feeling in the air. That line in the Zen was a reaction to Perl's "There's more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI)." Perl took the view that flexibility was a virtue to be praised above all others, and allows and encourages (or at least used to) different ways of doing things. I don't think a syntactic construct was excluded from Perl for the sole reason "well, we already can do that with this construct ..." Python, in part due to a backlash to the Perl philosophy, emphasized clarity and readability. There are *many* constructs which have been excluded from Python just because they weren't any clearer than what is already in the language. (Once a language is "Turing complete", anything you can program a computer to do, you can use that language to do. There is no guarantee that it's short or pretty, though.) That's what the "one obvious way" refers to - the clearest, most readable way of expressing what you want to accomplish. In this "obviousness", there is (often) little consideration for what other languages you previously might have used, or might be trying to drag idioms from. As an absurd analogy, if you were born and grew up in a country with a crazed totalitarian leader who, under penalty of death, made you turn around three times while hopping and whistling the national anthem before you sat down for dinner, it might be "obvious" to you that one must turn around three times, hopping and whistling before sitting down for dinner. However, if you move out of that country to, say, the Netherlands, for instance, you no longer need to hop-whistle-turn, and your new countrymen will look at you strangely if you do. That's not to say you can't hop-whistle-turn if the fancy strikes you, but in any practical setting, people will expect you do the simple, "obvious" thing -- just sit. BTW. People who are quick to bring up the Zen (and I'm as guilty as others at times) should also keep in mind that the Zen is found under the *humor* section of the Python website. It's not an actual design document, it's just a surprisingly intuitive description of Python's nature. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
