Why and how "there is only one way to do something"?

[bonono at gmail.com]

Chris Mellon wrote:
>You seem very, very interested in portraying anyone who
> wants to encourage good style and readability as a language Nazi. I
> don't appreciate that. You'll notice that I haven't taken the easy way
> out and told you to go away and play with Perl, right?
Noop. My stand is that good style and readability is a subjective
matter, to certain extend. The often quoted example of the ternary
operator demonstate that. I have no problem reading it as "this is the
preferred way in python, because we have done a large usability study
which indicate that", but saying it as "obvious" as if it is truth is
just strange to me and yes I would repeatedly pointing that out. You
can tell me to go away but that won't change anything. For most people,
they are not what you described as "trying to be smart" but because of
their background, truly feel that their way is more intuitive(or
obvious). It is just like there are language on this planet that reads
from right to left horizontally, as well as top to bottom, then right
to left. And you are trying to tell them that English way is the "right
way" or the obvious way.

I can't get your meaning of "language Nazi" so using the idiom of
"don't assume", I cannot comment on that part.

> Any time you want to write something in any way other than the obvious
> way, ask yourself why? Is it more obvious *to you*, which is a good
> reason as long as you're only writing code for yourself? Or is it just
> to be different, or because you think it'll be faster, or just because
> the slickness of it appeals to you?
>
The point is again, "obvious" is not so obvious sometimes. You seem to
be assuming that anyone that use style different from you is
intentionally doing it and that your style would first come to their
mind but they don't use it, for the sake of proving that they are
smart.
I don't know where you get that idea.

For most of the question I see asking here, they are from another
language background and their obvious way is what they are asking for
that they cannot find in python.