On 11/11/2013 09:52 PM, Xuancong Wang wrote:
You probably ought to weigh the ease of typing against readability. Which is more important? By how much?
Readability, a thousand times.
As people are used to python2, I don't think changing print to print() will improve code readability by how much, especially now VIM already highlights the print command in python. Probably you don't use print in python quite often, so you may not sense the difference in typing brackets. If you ever used C/C++/perl frequently, you should sense the inconvenience caused by brackets in loop structures.
If you don't like `print()`, do a `p = print` and then all you have is `p()` -- of course, you just lost a bunch a readability. But seriously, have often does any real program use print?
Separately, have you measured typing speed rigorously? The typing effort varies from person to person, from beginners to experts, maybe you are too expert to sense the difference which is sensitive to beginners. There's no rule-of-thumb and it's not just a speed issue. It's also related to energy spent by your fingers. So obviously, pressing 2 keys, you need to spend at least twice the amount of energy. And even more if you need to hold down 1 key.
Anyway, I am just introducing an alternative form to the print() function. As long as this does not reduce the performance of the interpreter significantly, it should not harm. And it should also improve the downward compatibility.
`print` is now a function, it's now going back to a keyword, and the interpreter loop isn't changing to support such a tiny use-case. -- ~Ethan~