On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 05:11:08PM -0500, Abe Dillon wrote:
> The problem here is not whether it's explicit. It's about Readability and
> conciseness. Using symbols in place of words almost always harms
> readability in favor of conciseness.
And that is why we prefer COBOL over unreadable Perl-like languages that
use unreadable symbols like:
arithmetic operators + - * / // % **
bitwise operators & | ^ >> << ~
comparison operators == != < <= >= >
function call symbols func(arg)
argument packing and unpacking *args, **kwargs
sequence slicing seq[::]
assignment =
comments #
decorator syntax @
What a horrible, unreadable language that would be.
REMARK this is much better than Perl-like x = func(a, b, c)
PUT THE RESULT OF CALLING FUNCTION func WITH ARGUMENTS a AND b AND c INTO x
\s
Why do you claim that symbols and conciseness is "almost always" worse
for readability? Your assertion doesn't survive even a cursory
consideration.
Readability doesn't occur in a vacuum. You have to understand the
symbols, and it doesn't matter whether they are punctuation or words, if
you don't understand them, they're "unreadable":
result = page_count + 1 # readable
jwrtsv = xpwvabs_ue + 1 # what?
result obqxayrhs page_count wmsna 1 # what?
The first time I encounted Python 1.5, I found it unreadable: it was
full of mysterious keywords "class", "def", strange punctuation like
[1:] and x.y, and idioms I couldn't guess like
for i in range(len(seq))
With no context, it might as well have been Ancient Sumarian.
Do you know what helps readability? *Learning to read*. Once you have
learned to read ?. and friends, they will be as readable as . and
slicing is now.
--
Steve
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