Thanks Nick, I'll adopt this approach when I update my teaching materials.
If I think of it, I"ll post here when I do that -CHB On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 12:21 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 13 July 2018 at 15:30, Chris Barker via Python-Dev > <python-dev@python.org> wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 3:18 PM, Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> > wrote: > >> > >> Definitely docs first. And we should keep references to generator > >> expressions too, if only to explain that they've been renamed. > >> > >> Perhaps someone should try it out in a 3rd party tutorial to see how it > >> goes? > > > > > > I'm not sure what "trying it out in a tutorial" would look like. > > > > I try to be pretty clear about terminology when I teach newbies -- so I > > don't want to tell anyone this new thing is called a "generator > > comprehension" if they aren't going to see that term anywhere else. > > Nina Zakharenko made the "they're officially called generator > expressions, but I find it more helpful to think of them as generator > comprehensions" observation in her PyCon 2018 presentation on "Elegant > Solutions for Everyday Python Problems": > https://www.slideshare.net/nnja/elegant-solutions-for- > everyday-python-problems-pycon-2018/27 > > The article from Ned Batchelder mentioned in that slide is this one, > which goes through the history of Raymond originally proposing the > notion as generator comprehensions, them getting changed to generator > expressions during the PEP 289 discussions, and then asking if it > might be worth going back to the originally suggested name: > https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201605/generator_comprehensions.html > > And then in PEP 572, it was found that being able to group all 4 > constructs (list/set/dict comps + generator expressions) under a > single term was a genuinely useful shorthand: > https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/#scope-of-the-target > > So trying out the terminology in a tutorial context would be to do > something similar to what Nina did in her talk: introduce the notion > of list/set/dict/generator comprehensions, and then make a side note > that the latter are officially referred to as "generator expressions". > > This wouldn't be the first time that terminology has differed between > Python-as-commonly-taught and Python-as-formally-defined, as I've yet > to hear anyone refer to container displays outside a language design > discussion - everyone else calls them container literals (or, more > typically, a literal for the specific builtin container type being > discussed). > > In this case, though, we'd be considering eventually changing the > language reference as well, and perhaps even some day the AST node > name (from GeneratorExp to GeneratorComp). > > We wouldn't need to change anything in the grammar definition (since > that already shares the comp_for and comp_if syntax definitions > between container comprehensions and generator expressions), or the > AST node structure (since GeneratorExp already uses a "comprehensions" > attribute, the same as the ListComp/SetComp/DictComp nodes). > > Cheers, > Nick. > > -- > Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia > -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov
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