[Python-ideas] Simplicity of C (was why is design-by-contracts not widely)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Steven D'Aprano writes:

 > I'm not sure how Stephen went from my comment that you can't unit test 
 > loop invariants to the idea that loop invariants aren't in the 
 > implementation.

Obviously I didn't.  I went from your statement that (1) contracts are
separated from the implementation and the inference from (7) that
contracts can specify loop invariants to the question of whether both
can be true at the same time.

 > Obviously the loop invariant has to be attached to the loop. You
 > can't attach a loop invariant to a method or class, because they
 > might contain more than one loop.

That's not so obvious.  At least in theory you could provide a label
for the loop (Common Lisp for example has named blocks), and refer to
that in an "invariant" section outside the function.  I couldn't
imagine a pleasing syntax without help from someone who's used
contracts, though.  That's why I asked.

It's not a big deal that they aren't both simultaneously true in
practice, it's just that there are a huge number of abstract claims
being made for contracts, and for my money they don't look anywhere
near as much of an improvement over asserts in practice as they sound
in the abstract, in decorator form or in Eiffel syntax.

As I said before, since a number of people are asking for them, I'm at
least +0 on including a contracts module with attractive syntax for
contracts in the stdlib on the general principle that we should
provide batteries for as many common patterns or styles as possible.
But I'm not ready to go that high for language changes for this
purpose, at least not yet.  Since I don't expect to be using contracts
any time soon, I'll leave the definition of "attractive" up to those
who expect to have to read them frequently.

Steve