Feature request: String-inferred names

[Ben Finney]

The Music Guy <fearsomedragonfly at gmail.com> writes:

> Please listen. In all the time I've spent in the coding community
> (that's at least 7 years) and especially since I started paying
> attention to the Python community (2 years), I have noticed a trend:
> When one coder does something that another cannot understand,
> frequently the other will assume the former is not only doing things
> wrong, but is doing them _blatantly_ wrong.

I think you may be misinterpreting the message.

> At this point, I don't even believe in such a thing as a universal
> "wrong way" and a "right way" to code that applies to every
> circumstance. The way to solve a problem depends on the problem.

You'll find firm agreement on that in this group.

> When it comes to coding, there is not an absolute "right" way or
> "wrong" way--unless we're talking about, say, stealing closed source
> code without permission, or deliberately coding in a way that will
> cause problems for the end user (like causing memory clogs or buffer
> overflows and whatnot).

However, when it comes to a *specific*, mature programming language,
there *are* right and wrong ways. Or, at least, there are ways
encouraged or discouraged by the language, its interfaces, its style
guides, and its community.

Which is very important: it's the rare program that is only ever read by
one person in one context. Far more often, the same program needs to be
read multiple times, by multiple people, in multiple contexts, over
multiple iterations of maintenance. And for that to be feasible, it's
very important to write the program the right way *for that language*.

Sticking to local conventions has a great deal of practical merit in the
medium of human-to-human communication that we call “programming”.
Progress depends on doing things differently; but maintainability
depends on keeping unexpected differences to a minimum.

-- 
 \     “The truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize |
  `\                         it.” —Mark Twain, _Following the Equator_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney