What Python needs is a better lambda syntax similar to JS and true anonymous multiline functions. Defining and using lambdas in Python feels very unpythonic, this is something JS gets perfectly.
Also fix the GIL.
What's Coming in Python 3.8
151–160 of 558 posts
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the n…
Does that mean someone born in 2008 will think C++ is simple and elegant?
I am both a Python programmer and a C++ programmer. I have programmed professionally full time in one or the other for years at a time. I think C++ is now a much better language than when I learnt it first (cfront). In particular C++11 really fixed a lot of the memory issues with shared_ptr and std:: algorithms. It is a better language now if you are doing anything larger than then a program that takes more than a few weeks to write. On the other hand, I love python for everything else and some of the new stuff is great but making a new way to print strings over and over tells me some people have too much spare time or not enough real work to do.
In my opinion formatting a string to print a debug statement should be as concise as possible whereas a lot of these fancier formatting systems are better suited to stuff that ends up staying for use by other people. Luckily there are ways to use ye olde printf style formatters in both for those times.
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be reduced into two simpler lines can’t it, both of which could be understood in isolation.
understanding lines in isolation is precisely besides the point here, because the code pattern has to be understood as a whole.
I don’t see why. ‘Assign x’ and ‘is x truthy’ can be understood separately. Worry about what x is being assigned. Then worry about whether its value is truthy.
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
My metric for this is to put some of my freshest student in front of a code and see how they deal with it. How easily can they understand it ? How easily can they write it ? Debug it ? They are most of the time a fantastic indicator of the cognitive load a feature will add in prod. Because of course a feature doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's always in a more complex context. So what's easy to understand for a student…
I for one predict that the new operator will appear very sparingly, in while loops and code golf competitions. There are already so many complicated semantics about mutability, iteration, bytes/strings, scoping, et al. And yet somehow a tiny piece of syntax that finally lets us stop writing "while true/break" is the big pain point?
Excess complexity almost always comes in small increments...
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#155Personally, I vote against the walrus. Code complication for a limited set of use cases. Boo, bad walrus.
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not clear to me what it does just from reading it How isn't it entirely obvious? := is the assignment operator in tons of languages, and there's no reason not to have assignment be an expression (as is also the case in many languages).
> := is the assignment operator in tons of languages It is? Which ones? Other than Go, I can not think of a single language that has ":=" as an operator. Java does not, JavaScript does not, C/C++ do not, Ruby does not, I don't think PHP does, Erlang/Elixir do not, Rust does not... (I could be wrong on these, but I've personally never seen it in any of these languages and I can't find any mention of it in these langua…
Delphi uses this as an assignment operator but it certainly isn't a popular choice in most mainstream languages.
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#157I long for a language which has a basic featureset, and then "freezes", and no longer adds any more language features. You may continue working on the standard library, optimizing, etc. Just no new language features. In my opinion, someone should be able to learn all of a language in a few days, including every corner case and oddity, and then understand any code. If new language features get added over time, eventua…
This is why a lot of scientific code still uses fortran, code written several decades ago still compiles and has the same output.
How long has the code which was transitioned to python lasted?
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
understanding lines in isolation is precisely besides the point here, because the code pattern has to be understood as a whole.
I don’t see why. ‘Assign x’ and ‘is x truthy’ can be understood separately. Worry about what x is being assigned. Then worry about whether its value is truthy.
like I said, the whole pattern is more than two lines. the pattern is actually assign-test-fallback-test-fallback-test-etc.
to quote the PEP:
reductor = dispatch_table.get(cls)
if reductor:
rv = reductor(x)
else:
reductor = getattr(x, "__reduce_ex__", None)
if reductor:
rv = reductor(4)
else:
reductor = getattr(x, "__reduce__", None)
if reductor:
rv = reductor()
else:
raise Error(
"un(deep)copyable object of type %s" % cls)
if reductor := dispatch_table.get(cls):
rv = reductor(x)
elif reductor := getattr(x, "__reduce_ex__", None):
rv = reductor(4)
elif reductor := getattr(x, "__reduce__", None):
rv = reductor()
else:
raise Error("un(deep)copyable object of type %s" % cls)Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
someone should be able to learn all of a language in a few days, including every corner case and oddity, and then understand any code. Why should this be true for every language? Certainly we should have languages like this. But not every language needs to be like this.
Well, maybe not for every language, but probably for a language where simplicity has been a major feature.
I started using Python seriously only three years ago after 30 years of other languages and I didn't find it very simple. Maybe the core of the language is simple but the standard library and many other important modules can be very complicated. Among similar languages Ruby and JavaScript are far simpler.
Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8
#160Python looks more and more foreign with each release. I'm not sure what happened after 3.3 but it seems like the whole philosophy of "pythonic", emphasizing simplicity, readability and "only one straightforward way to do it" is rapidly disappearing.
I'm working on a language with a focus on simplicity and "only one way to do it": https://vlang.io The development has been going quite well: https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md
Really interesting. For the skeptics, this is not just a proof of concept. There is a real app made using this language: https://volt-app.com/