On 2021-08-06 at 21:57:47 +1000,
Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 05, 2021 at 09:39:44AM +0100, Sam Frances wrote:
> > def fib(0):
> > return 0
> >
> > def fib(1):
> > return 1
> >
> > def fib(n):
> > return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
>
> I think that there is something rather disturbing about writing a
> function definition with a constant literal as parameter. It looks
> wrong and I'm sure it's going to confuse beginners.
You are not a beginner (nor am I); what's disturbing to you may or may
not look wrong or confuse someone else. When I was a beginner,
x = x + 1 was disturbing, wrong, and confusing to me.
The proposed definition of the Fibonacci sequence mirrors the ones in
Wikipedia¹ and OEIS,² and will certainly be at least familiar to those
with a background in mathematics or coming to Python from functional
languages.
That said, I agree that it's not a good fit for Python, for reasons
expressed elsewhere in this thread.
FWIW, Lisp Flavored Erlang³ (a syntactically imperative language built
atop the Erlang VM and run-time) doesn't repeat the "def," only the
argument lists:
lfe> (defun ackermann
((0 n) (+ n 1))
((m 0) (ackermann (- m 1) 1))
((m n) (ackermann (- m 1)
(ackermann m (- n 1)))))
Something like that might work in Python, but at that point, it's no
different from a function that matches on its *args argument.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number
² https://oeis.org/A000045
³ https://lfe.io/
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