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What's Coming in Python 3.8

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Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#341

Post by tjalfi »

colechristensen wrote: post #157
londons_explore wrote: post #70

I 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?

I have compiled Fortran programs from the 70s on modern platforms without changing a line. The compiler, OS, and CPU architecture had all disappeared but the programs still worked correctly.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#342

Post by Razengan »

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.

The '*' and '/' in function parameter lists for positional/keyword arguments look particularly ugly and unintuitive to me. More magic symbols to memorize or look up.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#343

Post by voldacar »

teddyh wrote: post #24
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.

“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…

No, those aren't really the reasons for my reaction. And if I told you my age, you would probably switch your argument and say that I'm far too young to criticize ;)

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#344

Post by owl57 »

tialaramex wrote: post #294
teddyh wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

Forewarned is forearmed. I headed into adulthood watching out for such mirages. For example: Making sure to listen to pop music enough that it does exactly what pop music is supposed to do (worm its way into your subconscious) so I don't wake up one morning unaccountably believing that Kylie Minogue was good but Taylor Swift isn't. My understanding of Python will probably never be quite as good as my understanding of…

How do you know to listen to Taylor Swift or whatever? In the last century it was easy to be in sync: you could just watch MTV. Is there something keeping the notion of pop coherent these days?

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#345

Post by jpetrucc »

xaedes wrote: post #108

Wow. Never would I have guessed the amazing concept of assignment expression is so confusing for, what it seems, a lot of python programmers. It really was time to introduce it to them.

It's not really that it's confusing, more so that it isn't necessarily 'pythonic'

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#346

Post by Noumenon72 »

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.

"if m as re.match(p1, line)" is not very English-like.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#347

Post by Aramgutang »

owlowlowls wrote: post #162
stefco_ wrote: post #146

There's a lot of talk in this thread about Python going down-hill and becoming less obvious/simple. I rather like modern python, but I agree that some features (like async/await, whose implementation fractures functions and libraries into two colors [0]) seem like downgrades in "Pythonicity". That said, I think some things have unquestionably gotten more "Pythonic" with time, and the := operator is one of those. In c…

>I'll add that := fixes something I truly hate: the lack of `do until` in Python, which strikes me as deeply un-Pythonic. Am I supposed to break out of `while True`? Am I supposed to set the variable before and at the tail of the loop (a great way to add subtle typos that won't cause errors)? This is relevant to what I've been doing in OpenCV with reading frames from videos! In tutorial examples on the web, you'll se…

That example can also be tackled with Python's little-known feature of calling the built-in `iter` with a second argument:

> for line in iter(f.readline, ''):

> ... # process line

See: https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#iter

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#348

Post by goatlover »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #293
tachyonbeam wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 34 and I don't like this, so it's definitely not only those above 35. Jokes aside, I would say I'm a minimalist and this is where my resistance comes from. One of the things that I dislike the most in programming is feature creep. I prefer smaller languages. I like the idea of having a more minimal feature set that doesn't change very much. In a language with less features, you might have to write slightly more c…

> In a language with less features, you might have to write slightly more code, but the code you write will be more readable to everyone else. I disagree with this, which is precisely why I prefer feature rich languages like Java or better yet Kotlin. It doesn't get much more readable than something like: users.asSequence() .filter { it.lastName.startsWith("S") } .sortedBy { it.lastName } .take(3) Now try writing tha…

Pretty sure the Go community will be fine with not being feature rich, since simplicity, maintainability and getting new people up to speed matter more for them.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#349

Post by txcwpalpha »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #286
txcwpalpha wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second point is quite an assumption to make. If it's okay to end up with the second one of your examples (without the ":=" operator), why did we need to add the walrus opeprator at all? And if you're referring to this statement from your original comment: > If variable_name, the substring from 3 to 5, is "fg", crash. I don't find this to be a clear statement at all. If I read this aloud to any of my programming…

> If it's okay to end up with the second one of your examples (without the ":=" operator), why did we need to add the walrus operator at all? A couple of reasons: - The walrus eliminates a line of code in the very common scenario where you would prefer not to recalculate (or retype) y(). - The walrus makes it easy to avoid recalculating y() in the less common scenario where you need to avoid doing that. > I don't fin…

>So let me ask you: is the problem you'd like to solve "I want to understand what this code does", is it "I like thinking about English grammar", or is it "I'm too busy to type my own code; that's what my secretary is for"?

The problem that has already been solved by every version far, is that it has always stuck to a code of being "pythonic", increasing accessibility, readability, and teachability to wide audiences. A hugely significant reason for Python's incredible rise in popularity and its use today is specifically because of it's readability. As much as it gets meme'd about, the fact that Python pseudocode is so close to real Python code is an enormous boon for the language.

I teach programming at a university level, and Python is the go-to, default language to teach programming. Dictating code so that it can be discussed in a classroom setting is very important, and as I mentioned before, your suggestion for reading it aloud just wouldn't cut it. Python is also the go-to, default language for programming-adjacent fields like data science, a lot of statistics, and every other non-programming-but-still-IT field. And again, this is because the people in these fields love the fact that, even with zero previous programming experience, they can look at or hear a piece of code and almost immediately understand what it is doing.

Python's strict adherence to being "pythonic" is hugely responsible for an entire generation of programmers, and hopefully will continue to be pythonic enough to continue lowering the barriers of entry to future programmers. I get that many seasoned developers are adopting an "well I got mine" attitude and don't care if future developers have a harder time learning the trade, but I personally find that to be very selfish, and I would hate to see future generations of programmers suffer just because the current generation apparently can't be arsed to do something like write one single, short extra line of code every now and then.

Re: What's Coming in Python 3.8

#350

Post by adrianratnapala »

ben509 wrote: post #276
ptx wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would "do/while" look like in Python? Since blocks don't have end markers (e.g. "end", "}", etc.) there's nowhere to put the while expression if you want the syntax to be consistent with the rest of the language.

One solution would be to borrow from Perl. You make a do block that executes once unless continued, and allow conditions on break and continue: do: thing() thing() continue if condition And you can now express "skip ahead" with a `break if X` as well.

Yes, although you don't have to be so perlish as to do the if in that order

    do:
        thing()
        thing()
        if condition:
            continue
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