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S<span style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">handy, </span></font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
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Interesting questions all, and based on the ensuing discussion it's a hard discipline to draw a</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3">line between writing an FAQ answer, advocacy, evangelization, and drawing fair</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3">(or unfair) comparisons with other languages, vs bashing or raging. And hard to be concise</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3">at the same time, without sticking to one clear objective for an FAQ.</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>* <font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3">Coincidentally I was about to post this interesting-but-slightly-basic essay:</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><font size="3">"Python & Java: A Side-by-Side Comparison",</font><big> Stephen Ferg, Jan 2007</big></font><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>
http://www.ferg.org/projects/python_java_side-by-side.html</big></font><font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big></big></font><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>Criticizing the library-fn name System.out.println() is fair game but not a valid critique<br>of the entire language; </big></font><font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>but the comments on clunky things like auto-boxing and<br>needing intermediate variables for </big></font><font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>list insertions are fair.<br>In fact, Java has too many basic list and string types, but that's set in </big></font><font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>stone now.</big></font><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>
</big></font><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">* <font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>There is also the "Python IAQ (Infrequently Asked Questions)"</big></font><br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>http://norvig.com/python-iaq.html</big></font><br><font size="3">and this guy's comments: </font><font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>http://theironlion.net/blog/python-infrequently-asked-questions/<br>As per his comment, I think one central question is "are the preferred idioms<br>in this language design more expressive, productive, less error-prone and more<br>runtime-efficient than language Y"?<br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></big></font>
<br style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">* <font style="font-family: Arial Black,Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial"><big>and there are various other online pages critiquing language design ("Python warts"),</big></font><br>
<font style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3">a lot of which is arbitrary, out-of-date or made moot by 3.0</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
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* Case-sensitivity is a total non-issue, it's universal these days.<br>* Whereas the whitespace-and-no-braces</font><font style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3"> policy is a legitimate question.<br>Even among my expert programmer friends, people tend to historically associate</font><font style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;" face="Arial" size="3"><br>rules on whitespace with generally being restrictive on programming style<br>(prime example: Fortran). Call it a preconception, but it's very prevalent.<br>Also, many editors, browsers, bulletin boards and websites totally mangle whitespace but not<br>braces, hence it is objectively harder to post and retrieve Python code online than PERL,C,Java.<br>vi's autoindent-with-noexpandtabs is also a prime culprit, especially for users with tabstops other than 4.<br>These are all legitimate points, except again I would treat them as caveats to be<br> aware of when exchanging code, rather than "flaws".</font><font size="3"><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">* When you talk about the move to Unicode as default in Python 3.0, users can still use traditional strings if they<br>
(explicitly) choose, so that part at least should be easy for migrating existing codebases.<br>We want to clearly separate out moans about scoping 3.0 migration, versus fundamental<br>philosophy about where things should be going.<br>In 10 years' time, will people expect languages to use Unicode seamlessly by default? Almost surely.<br>
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>>Q5. Why is Pep-8 hard to read?<br>
>>Why don't Python docs link to sample code and a wiki?<br>
>>Why aren't usual "gotcha's" pointed out in the Python documentation.<br>
>[Charles] A5. Because you haven't rewritten the Python documentation.<br>
<br>See above resources. Where would you suggest they be centrally linked from?<br>As per Charles' response, the question might best be rephrased as "Which parts of<br>Python documentation are most in need of volunteers (and how do I sign up)?"<br>
PEP-8 is good but pretty dense; folks, is there yet an Eclipse or other plugin<br>that enforces (or flags) PEP-8 compliance, allowing me to opt out of some<br>giudelines? Now that would be awesome.<br>
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<br>
>Why isn't rgruet's quick reference guide part of the Python documentation?<br>
<br>
A worthy question for Fred Drake and Richard Gruet.<br>As a sidenote, whichever documentation you rely on, you need volunteers<br>constantly actively monitoring it and suggesting changes for deprecated<br>features (e.g. methods of string objects). This is no small task.<br>Why not list us your top-ten of doc sections you would like to overhaul?<br>(I submitted a rewrite for the section on the 'with' keyword.)<br>
<br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
Best,</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
Stephen</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
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<br><font size="3"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> From: sjbrown@vmware.com</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> </span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> I'm trying to compile a list of frequent objections against using Python</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> and a rational response to each. Basically the same format as an FAQ.</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> It occurs to me that perhaps someone in the community has already come</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> up with such a list. So... any links?</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> </span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;">
> Shandy</span><br style="font-family: Geneva,Arial,Sans-serif;"></font>
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