[Python-ideas] Add list.join() please

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 8:50 PM Jamesie Pic <jpic at yourlabs.org> wrote:
>
> For me, assembling a string from various variables is a much more
> common programing task, because that's how users except software to
> communicate with them, be it on CLI, GUI, or through Web.
>
> It doesn't matter if your software works and the user doesn't
> understand it. It doesn't matter if your software doesn't work, as
> long as the user understands it.
>
> I wonder what makes my use case so special, perhaps because when I
> make software it's always on the purpose to serve an actual human
> being need ?

Most places where you need to talk to humans, you'll end up either
interpolating the values into a template of some sort (see: percent
formatting, the format method, and f-strings), or plug individual
values straight into method calls (eg when building a GUI). I'm not
sure why or how your use-case is somehow different here.

It's generally best to provide simple low-level functionality, and
then let people build it into whatever they like. For example, VLC
Media Player and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive don't have any means
of interacting, but with some simple Python programming in between,
it's possible to arrange it so that the music automatically pauses
while you're in a match. But there does NOT need to be a game feature
"automatically pause VLC while in a match". Joining a collection of
strings is possible. Stringifying a collection of arbitrary objects is
possible. There doesn't need to be a single feature that does both at
once.

ChrisA