"Usability, the Soul of Python"

[Xavier Ho]

Did no one notice that

for(i = 99; i > 0; ++i)

Gives you an infinite loop (sort of) because i starts a 99, and increases
every loop?

Cheers,

Ching-Yun Xavier Ho, Technical Artist

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On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:40 PM, Alf P. Steinbach <alfps at start.no> wrote:

> * Jean-Michel Pichavant:
>
>> John Nagle wrote:
>>
>>> Jonathan Hayward wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've posted "Usability, the Soul of Python: An Introduction to the
>>>> Python Programming Language Through the Eyes of Usability", at:
>>>>
>>>>   http://JonathansCorner.com/python/
>>>>
>>>
>>>   No, it's just a rather verbose introduction to Python, in dark brown
>>> type on a light brown background.  One could write a good paper on this
>>> topic, but this isn't it.
>>>
>>>
>>>                John Nagle
>>>
>> Why is it bad ?
>>
>
> Consider
>
>
> <quote>
> From a usability standpoint, the braces go with the lines to print out the
> stanza rather than the for statement or the code after, so the following is
> best:
>
> for(i = 99; i > 0; ++i)
>    {
>    printf("%d slabs of spam in my mail!\n", i);
>    printf("%d slabs of spam,\n", i);
>    printf("Send one to abuse and Just Hit Delete,\n");
>    printf("%d slabs of spam in my mail!\n\n", i + 1);
>    }
> </quote>
>
>
> This is just unsubstantiated opinion, but worse, it makes a tacit
> assumption that there is "best" way to do indentation. However, most
> programmers fall into that trap, and I've done it myself. In fact, when I
> worked as a consultant (then in Andersen Consulting, now Accenture) I used
> the style above. Petter Hesselberg, author of "Industrial Strength Windows
> Programming" (heh, I'm mentioned) asked my why on Earth I did that, like,
> nobody does that? It was a habit I'd picked up in Pascal, from very naïve
> considerations of parse nesting levels, a kind of misguided idealism instead
> of more practical pragmatism, but since I realized that that was an
> incredibly weak argument I instead answered by pointing towards Charles
> Petzold's code in his "Programming Windows" books. And amazingly I was
> allowed to continue using this awkward and impractical style.
>
> I may or may not have been responsible for the similarly impractical
> compromise convention of using three spaces per indentation level. At least,
> in one big meeting the question about number of spaces was raised by the
> speaker, and I replied from the benches, just in jest, "three!". And that
> was it (perhaps).
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Alf  (admitting to earlier mistakes)
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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