everyone (seems to) use it

I beg to differ. It was mentioned at a Python conference I went to last year and hardly anyone had heard of it, let alone actually used it. Don't believe all the hype.

"The Zen of Python" (import this) is often quoted. The line "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." (obviously a stab at Perl) is broken so often in Python 2.6 and 3.1 that it is getting to be a TMTOWTDI language. The "cleaness" is an illusion, is using triple quotes clean? Perl is honest about using sigils, but Python uses them as well, leading underscores mean different things, depending on how many and where they are in the variable name. It uses @ as a decorator sigil - different to Perl's use and Ruby's use. Of course without mandatory sigils you cannot have interpolation, so Python does not have that. The lack of curley braces means you cannot define a variable just for a conditional block, and you can't have a case statement. Actually, come to think of it, there is no way to just define a variable (see the requirement for Python 3 function nonlocal and the discussion in PEP 3104). Anyone who thinks the new format syntax is clear and clean has never tried to teach it to novices. Sorry, I'm ranting...

Superficially Python is a clean language, its just that when you stretch it then it is as dirty as the rest.

In reply to Re^3: Seeking Best Practices - does your company follow a standard? by cdarke
in thread Seeking Best Practices - does your company follow a standard? by meraxes

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