[Tutor] “has a value of True” versus “evaluates true”

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 12:16:19PM -0800, Danny Yoo wrote:
> > Unlike some languages, which choose confusing and arbitrary sets of
> > values that count as truthy or falsey, Python encourages a simple
> > distinction, something versus nothing. Values which represent some kind
> > of "nothing" are falsey:
> 
> 
> Hi Steven,
> 
> Sure.  I'm not arguing that Python's choices of what's truthy or
> falsey isn't consistent or hard to remember.  What I'm saying is that
> I personally have to deal with multiple languages at once these days.
> (JavaScript is the big one.)  I find one of the points where things
> seem needlessly divergent is truthiness.  Given that, I personally
> subset the language so that I don't have to spend brainpower on this
> issue.

*shrug*

Any time you use multiple languages, you have to deal with their 
differences in syntax and semantics. That's the cost of using multiple 
languages. I'm sympathetic to that fact, but I'm not sympathetic to the 
suggestion that we should avoid a sensible and useful language feature 
because *other* languages do things differently.

Deliberately forgoing the use of a language feature because you have 
trouble with it is understandable. You know your own strengths and 
weaknesses, and if that helps you avoid bugs that's a good thing. But 
the cost is that you may be writing unidiomatic code, or code that works 
but can be improved.

If I couldn't remember the difference between [1, 2] and (1, 2), and 
consequently wrote list([1, 2]) "just to be sure", we'd all agree that 
it was poor coding style even if we sympathised with my confusion over 
lists and tuple.


> As a confession: I have run and introduced bugs where the root cause
> was one language's truthiness table diverging from another.  Given
> that I recognise that I make this particular class of mistake a bit
> more frequently than I'd like, I try to account for this personal
> weakness and engineer for it.  I am not clever.

I think you're a lot cleverer than you give yourself credit for, and 
your coping strategy is a matter for you and anyone reviewing your code. 
Criticising people's code can often be mistaken for criticising the 
person themselves, but it shouldn't be seen that way. 


> >> To quote: "Let your statement be: 'Yes, yes', or "no, no': anything beyond
> >> these is of evil."
> >
> > "Have you stopped abusing small children yet?"
> 
> :(
> 
> I don't understand what your response here means.

"Yes" means that the answerer previously abused children; "No" means 
that haven't stopped. If the answerer never abused children at all, the 
question is a trap and neither Yes nor No is an accurate, truthful 
answer. Matthew's instruction that an accurate answer that explains the 
facts correctly ("I have never abused children at all") is to be 
considered "evil" is itself wicked, or at least terribly naive.


> My intent in
> quoting Matthew 5:37 was purely as a joke, precisely because the quote
> is so ridiculously out of context and definitely not intended to apply
> to the boolean context of programming languages.  My apologies if you
> didn't like that.

Your quote was intended to be humourous, as was my reply. I certainly 
wasn't implying that you have abused children.


-- 
Steve