On 2010-11-02, D'Arcy J.M. Cain <da...@druid.net> wrote: > "Large" is no excuse for incompetency.
It is in practice. > So configure it to recognize Python files and act accordingly. So far as I know, it doesn't have a feature to do this. In any event, I work around it okay. >> No, they aren't. See... That would work *if I knew for sure what the intent >> was*. >> >> if foo: >> bar >> else: >> baz >> quux >> >> Does it look right? We have *no idea*, because we don't actually know >> whether quux was *intended* to be in the else branch or whether that's a >> typo. > And C has the same problem. Not quite! > if (foo) > bar; > else > baz; > > quux; > Is quux meant to be part of the else clause? The writer's indentation > suggests "yes" but the code says "no". Right. And that's the thing: In C, I know there's something wrong here. I may not know what it is, but I know *something* is wrong. > Same is true for the C code. Pretty much! > In both cases you can tell what the code > will do (modulo weird macros in the C code) but the intention is > impossible to determine without mind reading abilities in both cases. > We do know that the Python code *appears* to be doing exactly what the > author intended and the C code *appears* to not be. Yes. And in my experience, that means that since the code must be wrong (or I wouldn't be looking at it), it's very nice that in one of them, I've just been told for sure that the writer was confused right here at this line. In the other, I have no way of knowing that the writer was confused. What was it someone once said? "Explicit is better than implicit." I *like* my parity bits. -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated! I am not speaking for my employer, although they do rent some of my opinions. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list