From: "jimjhb@aol.com" <jimjhb@aol.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 11:11 AM
Maybe something from the Python leadership saying breaks are fine? Given their lack of support for gotos it's easy to see how others might feel breaks and continues are bad as well, even in Python.
$ grep break cpython/Lib/*py |wc -l 551 $ grep continue cpython/Lib/*py |wc -l 280 A handful of those are actually things like "setcbreak", but I'd guess at least 90% are breaking out of loops. Then there are the examples all over the official tutorial, module reference docs, FAQs, etc. that use break and continue. And Python's loop else clauses would clearly not exist if break weren't idiomatic. If all of that isn't enough to convince people, I doubt a statement from Guido undersigned by a dozen other key leaders would make a difference. And really, the larger problem is that people are trying to apply standards for idioms from C, C++, Java, C#, etc. to Python, not that this particular one is wrong. This is the same mentality that convinces people to use special error return values and check-before-open instead of exceptions, and all kinds of other things that are just plain wrong. If they haven't figured out yet that C and Python are not the same language, I don't know what anyone can say or do, short of not hiring them, protesting working alongside them, and exposing them to public ridicule.