colostomy

[Dirck Blaskey]

Cliff Crawford <cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn8dqo5c.4sd.cjc26 at ith1-491.twcny.rr.com...
> * Dirck Blaskey menulis:
>>...
>> Please, PLEASE make colon's optional when not needed.
>> ...
> I actually like the colons.  They seem to make code a little easier
> to read.

I don't dispute their aesthetic value,
but for me, in practice, the requirement gets in the way.
I'm not exactly a new Python user either, I've written
a fair amount of Python code.  I just seem to have trouble
sometimes teaching my hindbrain to remember things
that my frontbrain forgets.
(I HATE learning a new text editor.)

I'm willing to bet I'm not the only coder who forgets to put
them in on a regular basis.  And since they're not really necessary,
they should at least be optional.

(The best approach for handling User Input errors
 isn't to provide a good error message,
 but to eliminate the possibility of error.)

>
>> I waste a lot of time going back and filling in the bloody things.
>
> After I learned Python, I had the same problem at first with C and
> semicolons.  I'm not sure why I hate semicolons as EOL markers, but
> like colons as block markers; I guess one is too much redundancy
> while the other is just the right amount. <g>

After many (10+) years of heavy (Heavy) C coding, I still would
occasionaly forget to type in semi-colons -
and now when typing Python I occasionaly add them in without thinking.
Fortunately, Python is cool enough not to complain.

>> The only other suggestion I have, and this isn't nearly as important:
>> it would be nice to have block comments like c's /* */ ...
>
> You can enclose the comment in """...""".  You can have strings
> anywhere where a statement is expected.

I hadn't known """ was allowed as a block comment -
I had thought doc strings were the only block option.

thanks for the tip,

d
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Dirck Blaskey
Danbala Software
dirck at danbala.com
http://www.danbala.com