PEP308: Yet another syntax proposal

[Paul Rubin]

"Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> writes:
> > Otherwise, tell us what is is the "correct" answer?  10% of the time?  1%?
> > 0.1%?  There is no correct answer.
> 
> Estimated at over once every 5,000 lines, but likely even lower
> rates.  See other posts of mine for why.


Andrew, I keep wondering why you post these statistics.  I gather the
low frequency of conditional expressions (CE's) in code that you
examine is supposed to be some kind of evidence that they're not
useful all that frequently.  However, empirically, whether they're
useful frequently or not, they're useful often enough that people keep
asking about them and we get these endless threads.

On the other hand, the most valid answer to the argument "well, let's
add them to the language and if you don't like them, then just don't
use them and stop bothering those of us who do" is that we have to
read code written by others, as well as write code ourselves.  And we
might be concerned that frequent use of CE's will lead to a lot of
code being confusing and hard-to-read.

In that context, your statistics about low usage frequency seem to say
that adding CE's will both satisfy the people asking for them AND
rarely bother those who don't like them (since they occur so seldom in
C programs).

But if that's the situation, why are you making such a big deal about
the issue?  There seem to be three camps here:

  1) those who like CE's and want to use them in their own code as a
     matter of stylistic preference

  2) those who don't like CE's and are concerned about getting confused
     by seeing them in other people's code, and

  3) your own posts, which seem to statistically argue that seeing
     CE's in other people's code will be a rare occurence, yet seem
     desperate regardless to keep CE's out of the language.

I thus have to ask: if CE's are so rare, then why does the subject
matter to you?  You won't be required to use them in your own code if
they're added.  And according to your own statistics, you'll very
seldom have to deal with them in other people's code either.

So I'm sorry, but it really sounds like you're trying to impose your
stylistic preferences on other people without any practical
justification.  The other CE opponents' posts don't give that
impression nearly as much.