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What's Coming in Python 3.8

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Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#251

Post by nerdponx »

upofadown wrote: post #154
nerdponx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Fair. Fortunately with all the blowback over the walrus operator I don't think we will be seeing any new operators for a long time.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#252

Post by ptx »

BuckRogers wrote: post #182

The problem with modern Python is that it's trying to recreate C# or Java. Which leaves it with nothing, because it'll only end up an inferior version of the languages/platforms of which it's attempting to duplicate. When I was into Python, I liked it because it was a tighter, more to the basics language. Not having 4 ways to format strings and so forth. I don't think Python can defeat Java by becoming Java. It'll lo…

The Zen of Python says that there should preferably be one obvious way to do it, not always strictly only one way.

Also, this motto should be interpreted in the appropriate historical context – as taking a position in relation to that of Perl, which was dominant when Python was gaining popularity and had the motto "there's more than one way to do it".

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#253

Post by emidln »

sleavey wrote: post #46
sametmax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable it in pylintrc. Pylint is unusable without a good config file anyway.

Ideally the defaults should be sensible. I have found they mostly are, except the f-string one.

pylint still sucks at partial function definitions. It wants to name anything that exists in the module scope that isn't an explicit function definition with CAPS_LOCK_MODE.

    $ pylint pylint_sucks_at_partials.py 
    ************* Module pylint_sucks_at_partials
    pylint_sucks_at_partials.py:7:0: C0103: Constant name 
    "add5" doesn't conform to UPPER_CASE naming style 
    (invalid-name)
The program in question:

    #!/usr/bin/env python
    """ proving pylint still sucks at partials """
    from functools import partial
    from operator import add
    
    
    add5 = partial(add, 5)
    
    
    if __name__ == '__main__':
        import sys
        print(add5(int(sys.argv[1])))

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#254

Post by Myrmornis »

I believe that I hit places where I'd use the walrus about once every few hundred lines of python, so I do see a use for it. OTOH I am worried that it makes the language harder to understand for beginners, and that is a very important role Python plays in the world of programming languages.

The abbreviated f-string syntax looks weird and kinda wrong to me. But then I'm not even sure I've got comfortable yet with the object field initialization shortcuts in Javascript and Rust (where you also get to omit stuff to avoid repeating yourself).

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#255

Post by Erwin »

marmada wrote: post #241
simondw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But now there are two ways to do assignment. That's not very pythonic, is it?

I never felt like there was only one way to do something in Python. Every Stack Overflow question has a multitude of answers ranging from imperative to functional style and with various benefits and drawbacks. Python is one of the least "only one way to do things" languages I've used. This even extends to its packaging system, where you can choose between virtualenv, pipenv, pyenv, etc. Same goes for the installation…

Prior to that you could use the special two-argument version of the `iter` function which makes it act completely different than the single argument version:

    for html_element in iter(scrape_element, None):
this calls scrape_element() until it returns None, returning each value.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#256

Post by PeterisP »

nerdponx wrote: post #125
sametmax wrote: post #60

Earlier 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?

I'd expect the new operator to become the idiomatic way to write certain quite common things, for example regexp group matching and objects returned by dictionary .get() - currently you always need a dummy variable to check if it's not None before you use it.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#257

Post by dlbucci »

pippy wrote: post #240
voldacar wrote: post #8

Python 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.

This is what happens when you lose a BDFL. While things become more "democratic", you lose the vision and start trying to make everyone happy.

Well, there were 4 versions released since 3.3 that still had a BDFL, so I dunno if that's the issue, yet.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#260

Post by mixmastamyk »

pmart123 wrote: post #245
ehsankia wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the controversy really about the need for the feature? I thought most people agreed it was a great feature to have, and most of the arguments were about `:=` vs re-using `as` for the operator.

I like "as" instead. I didn't realize that was on the table. To me, it seems more Pythonic given the typical English-like Python syntax of "with open(path) as file", "for element in items if element not in things", etc.

It had some drawbacks, which a great majority of the time won't apply. I too would have preferred an "as" clause that limited to if-statements, maybe while, and comprehensions.
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