Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[David Mertz]

Joe Marshall <jrm at ccs.neu.edu> wrote previously:
|it is *not* hard to see that they exist, nor hard to see if two
|adjacent ones are the same or different, but that it *is* hard to see
|exactly how many of them are there in deeply indented code).

Here's a quick rule that is pretty damn close to categorically true for
Python programming:  If you use more than five levels of indent, you are
coding badly.  Something is in desperate need of refactoring.

I did a scan of my Gnosis Utilities, which the tool SLOCCount' reports
as having about 7500 lines of Python code.  Using a quick custom script,
I find that I use more than depth five a total of four times--all of
them within a class definition.  Maybe that means I should do a little
refactoring, but even five levels is pretty unusual.

Visually distinguishing among four or five possible indent levels is
extremely easy.  The nonsensical non-problem about indecipherable
indents just simply never happens in useful code.

Yours, David...

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