[Python-ideas] Where-statement (Proposal for function expressions)

[Chris Perkins]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 12:05 PM, George Sakkis<george.sakkis at gmail.com> wrote:
> - What you call an advantage can be a disadvantage for many
> programmers used to the standard bottom-up way most procedural and
> object-oriented languages support. For better or for worse, thinking
> sequentially feels more natural than in terms of top-down levels of
> abstractions. Unless one is (or gets) used to this style, "where"
> blocks would be the code equivalent of top-posting; it doesn't make
> sense unless you read it backwards.

That's interesting - I see it as exactly the opposite. For me,
bottom-up approach appears backwards, and I get annoyed by having to
read backwards.  It clearly depends on what you're used to, I guess.

> - TIMTOWTDI. In any case, bottom-up won't go away so for any
> non-trivial piece of code one has to choose between two equivalent
> ways of expressing it. Think of Perl's "STATEMENT (if|unless) (EXPR)".
>
> I'm not saying that these are necessarily show stoppers but they
> should be addressed to see whether the benefits are worth the added
> complexity.

Yes, I'm very interested to see what proportion of people find the
top-down style more readable.

Chris Perkins