Python: the drain snake of programming.

[apotheon]

Every once in a while, someone notices I don't like Python much and wants an itemized list of reasons. It's not very easy to come up with such a thing on demand. I don't usually sit around making lists of reasons I dislike a given programming language, believe it or not, so I don't usually have such reasons in front of me. The short, flippant

Comments

[apotheon]

AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Y!M, email . . .

[apotheon]

I did.

[cluebyfour]

I know nothing about python, but is it correct to assume that self is like this in other languages? Wouldn't it be implicit and thus optional, or must it be explicit in python?

[apotheon]

My understanding is that there's a "simple" (relative term) set of rules for when it's optional and when it's not, and sometimes when optional you're supposed to use it anyway because in Python there may occasionally be more than one way to do it, but only one of them is considered "right".

self is indeed like this, or even me, in some other languages.

[ex_req431]

Egregious overuse of "self"?

hahah

[apotheon]

Amused?

[ex_req431]

very much so, darling

[cluebyfour]

Obviously, in python you have to touch your self a lot.

Oh, I kill me.

[scoth]

The OO python code I've encountered isn't nearly as horrendous as that; this behemoth isn't representitive of what python code usually looks like. It's really easy to write ugly code in any language.

As far as 'self' goes, it's generally considered good practice to explicitly reference the scope of the variable that you're using so that there's no confusion if you're referencing a local variable only valid for the current subroutine or a property that belongs to the instance of the object that you're using.

I can't do much without knowing more of the context but I've beautified part of that code for you. Is this less bleedy?

def getDefaults(self):
req = self.request().field
defaults = {
'active': req('active', 'true'),
'featured': req('featured', ''),
'categoryID': req('categoryID', ''),
'locationID': req('locationID', ''),
'year': req('year', str(DateTime.today().year)),
}

[scoth]

like reading a book without punctuation.

I take it you perlistas don't read much poetry ;-)

[apotheon]

I read plenty. Good poetry tends to be very easy to follow, even without punctuation - more like Ruby than Python.

[apotheon]

. . . and I take it you haven't heard of Perl Poetry.