Hello,
On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 14:29:03 +0100
Ronald Oussoren
In this regard, braces aren't worse than average other stuff posted here. Actually, it might be a bit more interesting, as it clearly moved people throughout the years.
That’s questionable. The primary reason I’ve seen so far is folks that dislike significant whitespace or mis the braces in they had in other languages (to put it bluntly).
And I've seen the primary reason to be able to write complex one-liners and multi-statement lambdas. Talk about the difference in perception, everyone sees what they want to see!
But as Chris has noticed there’s about 0 chance that any proposal for adding braces as an optional feature will be accepted. A lot of other proposals also have little chance of being accepted, but they do inform development of either the language or some library.
That's exactly the case for "python with braces" - "to inform".
In some sense reading about problems folks run into with the language are in general more interesting than full formed ideas because most of us aren’t very good language designers (and I count myself in that category).
Exactly the case for bringing up "python with braces". []
There were good reasons to not have string interpolation in the core language for decades then - KABOOM - there's string interpolation. You see a pattern yet? No? Oh, let's just keep watching.
I don’t agree, in hindsight there’s a clear path to the introduction of f-strings.
That's right the problem with that stuff. If Python suddenly gets alternative braces syntax, people like yourself will immediately start to sing dithyrambs to the wiseness of great helmsman who enabled Python to compete with braces languages, and how it always has been a clear path to that. That's the bravery of hindsight/a posteriori thinking. Can you make similarly brave foresight predictions of what Python *should* get? []
For everyone else who misses the point: the talk is about *alternative* (second) syntax. Nothing happens to the main indent-based syntax. Only people who need braces syntax would use it, just as they have been doing for decades.
They can continue to use a 3th-party project for that.
Did anybody talked about anything else on this thread? I didn't notice. Myself, I posed very specific question: was there a more or less formal proposal for braces syntax ever posted? I got my answer (only one person in the discussion bothered to answer to the actual topic of discussion, not just something related).
Having an formal alternative syntax at the very least sends out the signal that the language designers think that this is a good idea, and from what I’ve read in the past that’s not going to happen.
Reading that, it seems that when you read "formal proposal", you picture some old wise men in extravagant attires and headdresses, who got an exclusive and irrevocable license to write formal proposals. And "formal proposal police" which will seek and destroy anyone who goes for the heresy of writing a formal proposal themselves. That's totally not the case. "Formal" is nothing but an antonym to "informal". And informal process is what you do when you got a vague idea, and a second later already thrash on the keyboard, coding. A formal process is when you resist the urge, think it out well, and even write it down. So for example, not only you can develop something from it, but soneone else too. Or someone else can verify that what you developed is faithful enough implementation of the original idea. It's that simple, really. And the question was exactly about that, and not about anything else, like why braces are needed or not needed. [] -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com