psss...I want to move from Perl to Python

Rick Johnson rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com
Fri Jan 29 17:29:17 EST 2016


On Friday, January 29, 2016 at 2:49:24 PM UTC-6, sohca... at gmail.com wrote:

> I'm convinced that anyone who actually prefers Perl's
> syntax over Python is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
>
> [...]
>
> Readability counts.  I'd say readability is one of the
> most important features of a language, as you will read
> your code far more than you write it.  Perl is not
> readable.  I don't care how powerful your language is if
> you can't read it.

EXACTLY!

Which is the same reason why natural language is bound by
many structural rules. For instance: we utilize "syntactical
structures" like sentences and paragraphs to create
"comprehensible groupings", and we *NEVER* want to
arbitrarily, or randomly, use more than one space between
words, or more than one line between paragraphs.

STRUCTURE IS IMPORTANT!

And the only thing more important than a "self-imposed
structure" is a steadfast adherence to the "collective style
guides" of written communication. When we *ALL* utilize a
familiar structure, we will *ALL* spend less time
*CONSCIOUSLY INTERPRETING* superficial structural details,
and more time *ABSORBING* the actual meaning of the content.

ABSORPTION IS THE GOAL, NOT ABERRATION!

The goal of written communication is no different than any
other technology. We should strive to abstract away as much
as possible to the sub-conscience processes of our mind as
we can, so that we can target our mental focus purely on the
comprehension of content, *NOT* comprehension of structure!
When faced with an unfamiliar "syntactical structure", our
high level focus becomes "mired in the minutiae of the
superficial".

EVEN WHEN NECESSARY, THE SUPERFICIAL IS NOT IMPORTANT!

The goal of communication should never be (either
intentional or not) to distract or impress our readers with
our capacity to create "self-aggrandizing ornateness of
structure", which will undoubtedly obfuscate the intended
message, no, but to *STRICTLY* follow the collective
standards and practices of "acceptable syntactical
structuring" that will *facilitate* a smooth transition
between: ideas that are codified into symbolic languages,
and the translation of those linguistic symbols into concepts
in the mind of the reader.

ABSTRACTIONS ARE VITAL TO OUR COMPREHENSION OF COMPLEX
COMMUNICATION MEDIUMS!

For communication to function (at it's most basic level)
these abstractions must exist simultaneously in our codified
symbolic languages *AND* in our mental processes that
interpret them. But whilst our mental abstractions are
mostly unconscious, they can become disturbed when
dissonance is injected into symbolic languages in the form
of "poor syntactical structure". Break either link in the
chain, and a "smooth transition of ideas" becomes untenable.



More information about the Python-list mailing list