[Baypiggies] Frequently Argued Objections

[Andrew Toulouse]

No true Scotsman. Even circuit diagrams aren't completely explicit, since
they can be fabricated in any number of arrangements that affect signal
integrity. That's not the point. I like 'explicit is good' because I
absolutely *hate* it when hand-waving magic happens that is either not
extremely well-documented or extremely well-understood.

I've always hated when languages force me to use an implicit 'self' or
'this' because if I don't immediately realize I'm looking at a class method
as opposed to a function I need to reread the whole function with the right
scope in my head. In my opinion, Python doesn't exist directly to express
complexity concisely, but rather to express complexity *clearly*. I don't
think there's any universal purpose to high-level languages, either, beyond
some vague common theme of abstracting out details for either conciseness or
clarity or what have you.

--Andy

P.S. sorry for those of you who are getting my emails twice; i keep on
forgetting to change which email I send this from.

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Warren Stringer <warren at muse.com> wrote:

> [[[snip]]]
>

> *Is* there a reason to NOT use self? If not, then self is redundant. If the
> reason to use self is to bypass name resolution order, then I would suggest
> making the less common case explicit and the more common one implicit.
>
> Since we're taIking about Objections, I find the statement "explicit is
> good", without a justification, to be Objectionable.  The only truly
> explicit computer language is a circuit diagram. Even assembly language is
> implicit; anything with op codes is a transformation of an explicit routing
> of electrical charges to an implicit pattern that acts on an operand. Higher
> level languages build upon lower level ones by transforming explicit
> combinations into an implicit pattern.
>
> IMO, languages evolve by compressing complexity. Just as Morse Code
> compressed symbols tapped by hand over a wire, where the most common symbol
> "E" required a single tap. Python reduces complexity by removing the
> redundancy created by the often unnecessary enforcement of policy with typed
> variables and by removing the redundancy of using begin/end symbols (for the
> compiler) along with whitespace (for the human coders), when simply using
> whitespace would suffice.  As a result, Python is a more concise by making
> coding policy implicit. However, Python is less concise when it enforces a
> policy about making name resolution order explicit. From a statistical
> viewpoint, this is akin to a Morse Code that assigning a single tap, not to
> the letter 'E', where it belongs, but to the letter 'Z'.
>
> While some people may see "self" as an issue of faith, others see it as a
> statistical anomaly (in an otherwise compact language).
>
> Cheers,
>
> \~/
>
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