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The last time I looked at Python (which was something like a decade ago) the impression I was left with was that there was a sort of cognitive dissonance or col

by leoc 10y ago

The last time I looked at Python (which was something like a decade ago) the impression I was left with was that there was a sort of cognitive dissonance or collective self-deception going on. There was a simple, clean language subset which was the one presented in the official tutorial, by and large; and lying underneath there was another language full of introspection and underscores, which seemed to be necessary to get (many) things done without a boilerplate explosion. The impression I got was that everyone writing Python was convinced that those other guys didn't need to think about these dangerous, advanced features, but they were in the 10× hacker elite for which the power was necessary and appropriate. Now probably that's an exaggeration and somewhat unfair, but I think it's probably not completely wide of the mark. ;)

plorkyeran 10y ago
My experience with Python is that 90+% of your code base can be in the "nice" subset, but it requires some discipline. The key is to always, always, always encapsulate the complex parts in helper functions or libraries, and accepting that maybe it isn't worth making your code twice as complicated to save a single line.
marcosdumay 10y ago
The official answer from any Python developer to anybody asking about "magic" is "do not use it". It's simple, gets the message across, and when the ones asking are experienced enough to not need asking about it, they'll just be one disaster away from being experienced enough to know when to use it. (There are plenty of resources on how to do it. Just no assurance that you should.) Overall, it's a more useful response than the Ruby's community one. Ruby seems to have inherited the Lisp propensity of meta-programing everything so many of its basic libraries are incredibly hard to follow. Even with Ruby's metaprograming features being easier. Still, providing safe metaprograming features sidesteps everything. I do love Haskell.

by leoc 10y ago

plorkyeran 10y ago

My experience with Python is that 90+% of your code base can be in the "nice" subset, but it requires some discipline. The key is to always, always, always encapsulate the complex parts in helper functions or libraries, and accepting that maybe it isn't worth making your code twice as complicated to save a single line.

marcosdumay 10y ago

The official answer from any Python developer to anybody asking about "magic" is "do not use it". It's simple, gets the message across, and when the ones asking are experienced enough to not need asking about it, they'll just be one disaster away from being experienced enough to know when to use it. (There are plenty of resources on how to do it. Just no assurance that you should.) Overall, it's a more useful response than the Ruby's community one. Ruby seems to have inherited the Lisp propensity of meta-programing everything so many of its basic libraries are incredibly hard to follow. Even with Ruby's metaprograming features being easier. Still, providing safe metaprograming features sidesteps everything. I do love Haskell.