Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

[Tim Peters]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

[Aahz][color=blue][color=green]
>> "The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable
>> classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code --
>> not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death." --GvR[/color][/color]

[Sunnan][color=blue]
> Can anyone please point me to the text that quote was taken from? I
> tried to use a search engine but I only found quotations, not the source.[/color]

That's because it was originally in email to a company-internal
mailing list. If you're willing to move to Fredericksburg, VA and
work for Zope Corp, perhaps they'll let you in to the PythonLabs list
archives. Fair warning: I work for Zope Corp, and I'm not sure I can
get into those archives. So don't switch jobs _just_ for that.

[François Pinard]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

[Aahz][color=blue]
> =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois? = Pinard <pinard@iro.umo ntreal.ca> wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
> >No doubt it once was true, but I guess this ideal has been
> >abandoned a few years ago. My honest feeling is that it would be a
> >mis-representation of Python, assertng today that this is still one
> >of the Python's ideals.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Mind providing evidence rather than simply citing your feelings?[/color]

The important word was "honest", not "feeling". :-)
[color=blue]
> Yes, there's certainly redundancy in Python right now, [...][/color]

See here, I'm not asking you for proofs. :-)
[color=blue]
> but a large portion of that will go away in Python 3.0.[/color]

And when will that be? The principle of "there is only way to do it"
was observable in Python 1.5.2, and started to disappear at that time.
How many years between 1.5.2 and 3.0?
[color=blue]
> So where's the abandonment of the ideal?[/color]

Many of us are using Python today, week after week, year long. So let's
be pragmatic. Python is what it became and now is. Let's not define it
as a memory from the past nor as a futuristic dream.

--
François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca

[Steve Holden]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

Aahz wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <mailman.1192.1 112376393.1799. python-list@python.org >,
> =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois? = Pinard <pinard@iro.umo ntreal.ca> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>[Sunnan]
>>[color=darkred]
>>>[...] for Pythons ideal of having one canonical, explicit way to
>>>program.[/color]
>>
>>No doubt it once was true, but I guess this ideal has been abandoned a
>>few years ago.
>>
>>My honest feeling is that it would be a mis-representation of Python,
>>assertng today that this is still one of the Python's ideals.[/color]
>
>
> Mind providing evidence rather than simply citing your feelings? Yes,
> there's certainly redundancy in Python right now, but a large portion of
> that will go away in Python 3.0. So where's the abandonment of the
> ideal?[/color]

Mind providing evidence rather than citing your opinions? I don't see
any evidence that Python 3.0 will adopt Turing-machine-like canonical
algorithms, and anything more complex is (at least from a theoretical
point of view) merely syntactic sugar.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/

[Steve Holden]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

alex goldman wrote:[color=blue]
> Daniel Silva wrote:
>
>[color=green]
>>At any rate, FOLD must fold.[/color]
>
>
> I personally think GOTO was unduly criticized by Dijkstra. With the benefit
> of hindsight, we can see that giving up GOTO in favor of other primitives
> failed to solve the decades-old software crisis.[/color]

What software crisis? Knuth (among others) has demonstrated that it's
possible to do structured programming in assembly language (though I
have to say that not all his MIX was particularly well-structured).

The danger in GOTO is that it allows the undisciplined programmer to
develop a badly-structured solution to a programming problem. A
disciplined programmer will write well-structured code with whatever
tools come to hand.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/

[Sunnan]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

Tim Peters wrote:[color=blue]
> [Aahz]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>"The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable
>>>classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code --
>>>not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death." --GvR[/color][/color]
>
>
> [Sunnan]
>[color=green]
>>Can anyone please point me to the text that quote was taken from? I
>>tried to use a search engine but I only found quotations, not the source.[/color]
>
>
> That's because it was originally in email to a company-internal
> mailing list. If you're willing to move to Fredericksburg, VA and
> work for Zope Corp, perhaps they'll let you in to the PythonLabs list
> archives. Fair warning: I work for Zope Corp, and I'm not sure I can
> get into those archives. So don't switch jobs _just_ for that.[/color]

It's just that I'm having a hard time matching that quote to what I
though python was about. I thought boring code was considered a virtue
in python. ("Explicit is better than implicit", "sparse is better than
dense".)

Because what is "boring"? The opposite of dense, tense, intense. Utterly
predictable; it's like the combination of all my prejudices. Even before
I knew, I thought "Bet Python separates statements from expressions".


Sunnan
PS.
(People easily offended can substitute "boring" for "readable" in the
above text.)

[Scott David Daniels]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

Sunnan wrote:[color=blue]
> ...Because what is "boring"? The opposite of dense, tense, intense. Utterly
> predictable; it's like the combination of all my prejudices. Even before
> I knew, I thought "Bet Python separates statements from expressions".[/color]

Python is for terse, pithy prose; Python is not for poetry.

--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels@A cm.Org

[Ron_Adam]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

On Sat, 02 Apr 2005 00:40:15 -0500, Steve Holden <steve@holdenwe b.com>
wrote:
[color=blue]
>
>The danger in GOTO is that it allows the undisciplined programmer to
>develop a badly-structured solution to a programming problem. A
>disciplined programmer will write well-structured code with whatever
>tools come to hand.
>
>regards
> Steve[/color]

And how that becomes really clear when you want to modify a large
program that uses GOTOs librally.


Ron

[Donn Cave]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

Quoth Scott David Daniels <Scott.Daniels@ Acm.Org>:
| Sunnan wrote:
| > ...Because what is "boring"? The opposite of dense, tense, intense. Utterly
| > predictable; it's like the combination of all my prejudices. Even before
| > I knew, I thought "Bet Python separates statements from expressions".
|
| Python is for terse, pithy prose; Python is not for poetry.

That's an odd thing to say. Poetry is verbose, florid?
Python is Dutch.

Donn

[Aahz]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

In article <Vrv3e.133894$d P1.471335@newsc .telia.net>,
Sunnan <sunnan@handgra nat.org> wrote:[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> [Aahz]
>>>>
>>>>"The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable
>>>>classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code --
>>>>not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death." --GvR[/color][/color]
>
>It's just that I'm having a hard time matching that quote to what I
>though python was about. I thought boring code was considered a virtue
>in python. ("Explicit is better than implicit", "sparse is better than
>dense".)
>
>Because what is "boring"? The opposite of dense, tense, intense. Utterly
>predictable; it's like the combination of all my prejudices. Even before
>I knew, I thought "Bet Python separates statements from expressions".[/color]

Note very, VERY, *VERY* carefully that the quote says nothing about
"boring code". The quote explicitly refers to "reams of trivial code"
as boring -- and that's quite true. Consider this distinction:

if foo == 'red':
print 'foo is red'
elif foo == 'blue':
print 'foo is blue'

versus

print "foo is", foo

I'm sure you can think of many other examples -- real examples -- if you
put your mind to work; Guido's point is about the essential necessity of
refactoring and rewriting code for conciseness and clarity.
--
Aahz (aahz@pythoncra ft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"The joy of coding Python should be in seeing short, concise, readable
classes that express a lot of action in a small amount of clear code --
not in reams of trivial code that bores the reader to death." --GvR

[Scott David Daniels]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

Donn Cave wrote:[color=blue]
> Quoth Scott David Daniels <Scott.Daniels@ Acm.Org>:
> | Sunnan wrote:
> | > ...Because what is "boring"? The opposite of dense, tense, intense. Utterly
> | > predictable; it's like the combination of all my prejudices. Even before
> | > I knew, I thought "Bet Python separates statements from expressions".
> |
> | Python is for terse, pithy prose; Python is not for poetry.
>
> That's an odd thing to say. Poetry is verbose, florid?[/color]

No, poetry is to be read slowly and carefully, appreciating the nuance
at every point. You should be able to read "past" python, while poetry
is at least as much about the form of the expression as it is about
what is being expressed.
[color=blue]
> Python is Dutch.
>
> Donn[/color]

[Artie Gold]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

Torsten Bronger wrote:[color=blue]
> Hallöchen!
>
> Daniel Silva <dsilva@ccs.neu .edu> writes:
>
>[color=green]
>>Shriram Krishnamurthi has just announced the following elsewhere; it might
>>be of interest to c.l.s, c.l.f, and c.l.p:
>>http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/p...il/008382.html
>>
>>
>> The Fate Of LAMBDA in PLT Scheme v300
>> or
>> Lambda the Ultimate Design Flaw
>>
>>About 30 years ago, Scheme had FILTER and MAP courtesy of Lisp
>>hackers who missed them from their past experience. To this
>>collection, Scheme added a lexically-scoped, properly-functioning
>>LAMBDA. But, despite of the PR value of anything with Guy
>>Steele's name associated with it, we think these features should
>>be cut from PLT Scheme v300.
>>
>>[...][/color]
>
>
> The whole text seems to be a variant of
> <http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?th read=98196>.
>
> Tschö,
> Torsten.
>[/color]
Ya think? ;-)

--ag

--
Artie Gold -- Austin, Texas
http://it-matters.blogspot.com (new post 12/5)
http://www.cafepress.com/goldsays

[alex goldman]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

Artie Gold wrote:
[color=blue]
> Torsten Bronger wrote:[color=green]
>> Hallöchen!
>>
>> Daniel Silva <dsilva@ccs.neu .edu> writes:
>>
>>[color=darkred]
>>>Shriram Krishnamurthi has just announced the following elsewhere; it
>>>might be of interest to c.l.s, c.l.f, and c.l.p:
>>>http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/p...il/008382.html
>>>
>>>
>>> The Fate Of LAMBDA in PLT Scheme v300
>>> or
>>> Lambda the Ultimate Design Flaw
>>>
>>>About 30 years ago, Scheme had FILTER and MAP courtesy of Lisp
>>>hackers who missed them from their past experience. To this
>>>collection , Scheme added a lexically-scoped, properly-functioning
>>>LAMBDA. But, despite of the PR value of anything with Guy
>>>Steele's name associated with it, we think these features should
>>>be cut from PLT Scheme v300.
>>>
>>>[...][/color]
>>
>>
>> The whole text seems to be a variant of
>> <http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?th read=98196>.
>>
>> Tschö,
>> Torsten.
>>[/color]
> Ya think? ;-)
>
> --ag
>[/color]

Wow, the original is much funnier than the "joke"! (Because it's meant
seriously)


"plus the lambda is slower than the list comprehension" - ROTFL!

[Sunnan]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

Scott David Daniels wrote:[color=blue]
> No, poetry is to be read slowly and carefully, appreciating the nuance
> at every point. You should be able to read "past" python, while poetry
> is at least as much about the form of the expression as it is about
> what is being expressed.[/color]

Right, I agree with these descriptions of python vs "the poetry
languages". I'm not sure whether I'd consider python particularly terse,
though, but I don't know enough about it yet. (I've read a couple of
programs but never started a project of my own in it, mainly because I
love poetry. I can see the appeal of a "prose language", though.)

[Sunnan]

Re: boring the reader to death (wasRe: Lambda: the Ultimate DesignFlaw

Aahz wrote:[color=blue]
> Note very, VERY, *VERY* carefully that the quote says nothing about
> "boring code". The quote explicitly refers to "reams of trivial code"
> as boring -- and that's quite true. Consider this distinction:[/color]

Thank you for this important clarification.
[color=blue]
> if foo == 'red':
> print 'foo is red'
> elif foo == 'blue':
> print 'foo is blue'
>
> versus
>
> print "foo is", foo[/color]

Is the space added automatically? (Like awk does, if you add a comma.)
[color=blue]
> I'm sure you can think of many other examples -- real examples -- if you
> put your mind to work; Guido's point is about the essential necessity of
> refactoring and rewriting code for conciseness and clarity.[/color]

Which is a good point to make in almost any language, for code that is
to be maintained.

Sunnan

[Sunnan]

Re: Lambda: the Ultimate Design Flaw

Artie Gold wrote:[color=blue]
> Torsten Bronger wrote:[color=green]
>> The whole text seems to be a variant of
>> <http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?th read=98196>.
>>
>> Tschö,
>> Torsten.
>>[/color]
> Ya think? ;-)[/color]

Heh. I was glad that Torsten pointed it out; I didn't get what was funny
about the joke until then.