Rest assured I am not criticizing the FORM and USE of white space that Python so eloquently uses,
and subsequently makes it so beautiful and easy to read to the eye, by my example
of a single line of BASIC. Actually, back in the day, I would never have written it the
way I did for my question. I would have written it this way:
10 X=X+1:?X:GOTO10
(The Computer would have automatically translated that to 10 X=X+1:PRINTX:GOTO10)
And I would have written Chris's for next loop as follows:
10 FORN=1TO10:?N:NEXTN: REM It is bad form not to name N after NEXT to label which FOR NEXT loop is being incremented.
And I would not have been ashamed of the crunched out spaces, nor the multiple statements per line, because in the
real world when you are building a business, you do what you need to do to get the job done. Let me explain. My
company was writing full blown computerizations of every aspect of various kinds of companies on micro computers in the micro revolution, and replacing big IBM systems with tiny multi-user systems, and we had only 48,000 bytes of RAM CORE, of which 20,500 bytes was used for the entire operating system, which included either OS-65D or OS-65U Basic programming languages of OSI (Ohio Scientific Inc.), which left only 27,500 bytes to construct your entire program in. We were selling against the BIG machines, (WE WERE BEATING THEM OUT!) and we needed SPEED, which meant a lightning fast BASIC (which we hired Steve Jobs to create when he was a starving software engineer) and then we implemented coding in ways that sped that up further. Spaces and wasted lines that a teacher would have given me an A+ for in school (if there had been a class on it), in the real world, both cut down on the speed of execution of the program and drastically cut back on the amount of what could be accomplished in a single program, thus forcing a jump to a new program, all of which again cut down on speed of getting things done because we had to write our variables to disk before making the jump, and then reloaded them in the "chained" program next to be executed making a big PAUSE in the process of processing. (Of course, don't forget we also had to leave room for all of the data we were going to hold in memory also......IT ALL SHARED THE SAME 27,500 bytes.
To give you an idea of how successful we were at invading BIG BLUE's turf with our tiny machines, we ended up specializing in Telephone Companies, after having written complete "turn-key" systems for many many different kinds of companies. And in all of those lines of code my company generated, which surely must be in the seven figures, GOTO, and its other versions was unabashedly and freely used because BASIC is a line-number-orientated language, and GOTO naturally follows as the size of the program increases. And I can only say to you, from a personal point of view, that the real grade for excellence that counts, is the real world reward of what happens and continues to happen with your business's bank account. Customers buy solutions that work out well for them, both in the sale and after the sale....they just want it to work. And while I am sure someone is thinking Spaghetti Code, our style was highly conventionalized, something that we enforced rather strictly. What can I say? It worked out great! Maintaining the programs and adding new
abilities was never a problem. When I sold the company, we were still writing 99% of our code in Basic. (IT WAS A VERY
VERY VERY FAST BASIC.) So, you see, Basic was my ONLY language.
But that was the PAST. This is FINALLY the FUTURE. And while I am a bit disappointed those flying cars that were promised aren't here yet, we of the future now have the luxury of white space with no downside. It makes sense to use it as part of the programming logic. And while I am used to reading condensed code more than I am the great open spaces of programming freedom today, I will surely get used to it, and love it. My only real concern has been in how the flow of python works for the WHOLE PROGRAM FLOW, and you all have help me a lot here.......and I really appreciate it. And I assure you, intend to CONFORM to how Python sees itself being written. This is, after all, the future.
I am really looking forward to the adventure of Python. And rest assured, I read up on all the other languages first, as it is my habit to trace the path to the goal in advance of launching the ship, and nowhere do I find as much potential in the view I gained, than python affords. Which is why I am braving the waters of SOMETHING DIFFERENT, that is MUCH BETTER!
And n =+ 1 is an abbreviation that warms my heart to see!
Thanks,
Terry
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Terry Kemmerer wrote:
> I'm working on Ch. 5, "Fruitful Functions", or "How To Think Like A
> Computer Scientist" and I still can't count.
> (Don't laugh! I can't play the violin either...)
>
> In Basic, I would have said:
>
> 10 x = x + 1 : print x : goto 10
Good heavens! I never used GOTO, even on the C-64:
10 for n = 1 to 10
20 print n
25 rem n = 1 rem remove first rem for infinite loop
30 next
> run
> 1
> 2
> 3
> etc....
>
> I don't know why, but this great UNKNOWN bothers me a lot. Maybe it is
> because it was the first thing I learned in Basic,
> back 20 years ago when I was actually a programmer.... But I think it
> goes toward visualizing how things are
> going flow and be constructed without line numbers and the venerable
> GOTO statement.
>
> How is this done in Python? (So I can stop holding my breath as I study
> this great language....and relax.)
n = 1
while n <= 10:
print n
n = n + 1
Or:
for n in [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]:
print n
Or:
for n in range(10):
print n + 1
Etc......
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