Left to Right Programming

Post by adwn » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 6:01 AM UTC

sgarland wrote: post #94

adwn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole post is an opinion piece. It's not. The author gives objective reasons why Python's syntax is inferior – namely, that it makes IDE support in the form of discoverability and auto-completion more difficult.

This presupposes that the reader likes or even uses auto-complete. I do not, and there are many others like me.

Post by bvrmn » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 6:14 AM UTC

instig007 wrote: post #133

bvrmn wrote: post #109

Author picked up a quite convenient example to show methods/lambda superiority. I prefer list/set/dict comprehensions any day. It's more general, doesn't require to know a myriad of different methods (which could not exists for all collections, PHP and JS are especially bad with this) and easily extendable to nested loops. Yes it could be `[for line in text.splitlines() if line: for word in line.split(): word.upper()…

> I prefer list/set/dict comprehensions any day. It's more general, doesn't require to know a myriad of different methods It's the opposite, your knowledge of the standard set of folding algorithms (maps, filters, folds, traversals) is transferable almost verbatim across a wide range of languages: https://hoogletranslate.com/?q=map&type=by-algo

Post by jibal » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 6:21 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #46

kmoser wrote: post #5

> Programs should be valid as they are typed. That would be nice if devs always wrote code sequentially, i.e. left to right, one character at a time, one line at a time. But the reality is that we often jump around, filling in some things while leaving other things unfinished until we get back to them. Sometimes I'll write code that operates on a variable, then a minute later go back and declare that variable (perhap…

I agree with this, but it leads to another principle that too many languages violate - it shouldn't fail to compile just because you haven't finished writing it! It should fail in some other non-blocking way. But some languages just won't let you do that, because they put in errors for missing returns or unused variables.

Post by jibal » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 6:22 AM UTC

kmoser wrote: post #101

astrange wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, but it leads to another principle that too many languages violate - it shouldn't fail to compile just because you haven't finished writing it! It should fail in some other non-blocking way. But some languages just won't let you do that, because they put in errors for missing returns or unused variables.

How is it supposed to compile if you've written something syntactically invalid? You can make the argument that the compiler could interpret it in (perhaps even arbitrary) valid way that constitutes a valid syntax, but that's almost worse: rather than being chided with compiler warnings, you now end up with code that compiles but executes indeterminately.

Post by benrutter » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 6:24 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #84

juancn wrote: post #39

SQL shows it's age by having exactly the same problem. Queries should start by the `FROM` clause, that way which entities are involved can be quickly resolved and a smart editor can aid you in writing a sensible query faster. The order should be FROM -> SELECT -> WHERE, since SELECT commonly gives names to columns, which WHERE will reference. You could even avoid crap like `SELECT * FROM table`, and just write `FROM…

Kusto, the Azure query language for data analysis uses that form with piping as well. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/kusto/query/?view=microsof... Also the LINQ approach in .NET. I do agree, that is about time that SQL could have a variant starting with FROM, and it shouldn't be that hard to support that, it feels like unwillingness to improve the experience.