Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 6:21 AM, Ben Finney  wrote:
> Chris Angelico  writes:
>
>> Maybe we need a blog post "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About PEP
>> 8", along the lines of the ones about time and names.
>
> Great suggestion. (Do you have a blog on which you could post an article
> like this?)

An initial list has been posted here:

http://rosuav.blogspot.com/2016/04/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about.html

Additional contributions are still welcome.

ChrisA
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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Dan Sommers]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2016 11:48:11 +1000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Apr 2016 09:35 am, Dan Sommers wrote:
> 
>> We (this mailing list, or maybe it was the python-ideas mailing list)
>> just had a thread about non-ASCII characters in identifiers.  One of
>> the main argument against is the confusables (A vs Α vs А).
>> Sufficient tooling, however, could render (pun intended) that
>> argument moot.  Not too long ago, one of the main arguments against
>> was that not everyone's tools could even render Α or А.
> 
> Technically speaking, they still might not. My editor can render both
> Cyrillic and Greek characters, but does a terrible job at Chinese and
> Korean because I don't have the font support. So all I see is a series
> of "missing character" boxes. There may be folks who don't have
> installed fonts that support Cyrillic or Greek.

I think we're agreeing.  Not everyone's tools render the same source
code the same way, which means that at least some part of readability
depends on the tools people use.

People who use screen readers rather than visual displays probably
wonder why the rest of us can't tell our "l"s from our "1"s and our "O"s
from our "0"s.

If PEP8 is about readability, then it should dispell the myth that
everyone perceives source code the same way through the same tools.
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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2016 09:35 am, Dan Sommers wrote:

> We (this mailing list, or maybe it was the python-ideas mailing list)
> just had a thread about non-ASCII characters in identifiers.  One of the
> main argument against is the confusables (A vs Α vs А).  Sufficient
> tooling, however, could render (pun intended) that argument moot.  Not
> too long ago, one of the main arguments against was that not everyone's
> tools could even render Α or А.

Technically speaking, they still might not. My editor can render both
Cyrillic and Greek characters, but does a terrible job at Chinese and
Korean because I don't have the font support. So all I see is a series
of "missing character" boxes. There may be folks who don't have installed
fonts that support Cyrillic or Greek.



-- 
Steven

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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2016 06:44 am, Random832 wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016, at 16:21, Ben Finney wrote:
>> * Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.
> 
> Some text editors have shortcuts to navigate to the previous/next line
> that begins with a form feed.

Are you saying that's a falsehood?


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Steven

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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Dan Sommers]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2016 07:34:20 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 7:22 AM, Dan Sommers  wrote:
>> On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 16:44:30 -0400, Random832 wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016, at 16:21, Ben Finney wrote:
 * Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.
>>>
>>> Some text editors have shortcuts to navigate to the previous/next line
>>> that begins with a form feed.
>>
>> Add these to the list of myths:
>>
>> * All producers use the same tools to produce code.
>> * All consumers use the same tools to consume code.
>> * All entities that produce and consume code use the same tools.
>> * All entities use the same tools to consume code that they do to produce it.
> 
> Those are definitely myths, but are they sufficiently connected to PEP 8?
> 
> ChrisA

PEP8 is all about readability, and we all read source code through one
tool and/or another.  Anecdotally, a lot of readability arguments
(including that one about some text editors treating U+000C as a special
case) end up being as much about the tools we use as they are about the
source code itself.

We (this mailing list, or maybe it was the python-ideas mailing list)
just had a thread about non-ASCII characters in identifiers.  One of the
main argument against is the confusables (A vs Α vs А).  Sufficient
tooling, however, could render (pun intended) that argument moot.  Not
too long ago, one of the main arguments against was that not everyone's
tools could even render Α or А.
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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 7:22 AM, Dan Sommers  wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 16:44:30 -0400, Random832 wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016, at 16:21, Ben Finney wrote:
>>> * Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.
>>
>> Some text editors have shortcuts to navigate to the previous/next line
>> that begins with a form feed.
>
> Add these to the list of myths:
>
> * All producers use the same tools to produce code.
> * All consumers use the same tools to consume code.
> * All entities that produce and consume code use the same tools.
> * All entities use the same tools to consume code that they do to produce it.

Those are definitely myths, but are they sufficiently connected to PEP 8?

ChrisA
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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Dan Sommers]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 16:44:30 -0400, Random832 wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016, at 16:21, Ben Finney wrote:
>> * Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.
> 
> Some text editors have shortcuts to navigate to the previous/next line
> that begins with a form feed.

Add these to the list of myths:

* All producers use the same tools to produce code.
* All consumers use the same tools to consume code.
* All entities that produce and consume code use the same tools.
* All entities use the same tools to consume code that they do to produce it.
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Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Random832]

On Sat, Apr 16, 2016, at 16:21, Ben Finney wrote:
> * Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.

Some text editors have shortcuts to navigate to the previous/next line
that begins with a form feed.
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 6:21 AM, Ben Finney  wrote:
> Great suggestion. (Do you have a blog on which you could post an article
> like this?)

I do. I'll let people contribute for a while, and then I'll post it on
rosuav.blogspot.com.

Thanks for the additions!

ChrisA
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Falsehoods People Believe about PEP 8 (was: Guido sees the light: PEP 8 updated)

[Ben Finney]

Chris Angelico  writes:

> Maybe we need a blog post "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About PEP
> 8", along the lines of the ones about time and names.

Great suggestion. (Do you have a blog on which you could post an article
like this?)

> Remember, every one of these is false.
>
> * All Python code should follow PEP 8.
>
> * If you use a tool named pep8, your code will be PEP 8 compliant.
>
> * If your code is PEP 8 compliant, a tool named pep8 will accept it.
>
> * The Python Standard Library is PEP 8 compliant.
>
> * Okay, at least the new parts of the standard library are PEP 8
>   compliant.
>
> * PEP 8 compliant code is inherently better than non-compliant code.
>
> * PEP8-ing existing code will improve it.
>
> * Once code is PEP 8 compliant, it can easily be kept that way through
>   subsequent edits.
>
> * PEP 8 never changes.
>
> * Well, it never materially changes.
>
> * I mean, new advice, sure, but it'll never actually go back on a
>   rule.

* The line length limit is obsolete in an age of high-resolution
  displays.

* Okay, but if you disregard side-by-side windows, lines of code can be
  arbitrarily long without hurting readability.

* Well, maybe not several hundred characters, but surely 120 characters
  of code on a line is easy enough to read.

* The only valid white space is line breaks and U+0020 SPACE.

* Okay, U+0009 TAB when lining up columns, but no other white space.

* Oh, come on, no-one would use U+000C FORM FEED in source code.

-- 
 \   “The apparent lesson of the Inquisition is that insistence on |
  `\ uniformity of belief is fatal to intellectual, moral, and |
_o__)spiritual health.” —_The Uses Of The Past_, Herbert J. Muller |
Ben Finney

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