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Curious then how you feel about `sorted()` being in the global namespace. Point being I don't understand how `.lower()` et al., being class methods instead of g

Curious then how you feel about `sorted()` being in the global namespace. Point being I don't understand how `.lower()` et al., being class methods instead of global functions is an argument for the greatness of Python. Ultimately the responsibility is yours for invoking it in the right place with the right type of object, no matter where you put the parens.

drostie 15y ago
In Python that actually makes some amount of sense, because Python ships with something like five different sorts of lists (arrays, lists, tuples, OrderedDicts, generators) and it's a reasonably generic idea. And it helps that for the one 'proper' case of this, lists, Python also supports list.sort(), so that "it is where it's supposed to be" as well. The only problem with list.sort() in Python is that it's void; it returns None. It should either return self (and sort self) or return a sorted copy of self, like sorted() will. On the other hand, in JavaScript, array.sort() is known to be a little broken: > [48, 19, 7, 14, 30, 22, 45].sort() [14, 19, 22, 30, 45, 48, 7] Wat. It's true that I have ultimate responsibility for my code, and it's true that in Python I can write: x = 3 x.lower() ...and unlike Java it will not complain that it has no idea how to "lower" 3. But it still suggests like Java suggests that we're going to narrow down the wildly branching tree of possibilities. When I'm sitting in the Python REPL, and I have an object x, I'll often just call dir(x), to see what I can do with it. What would Common Lisp tell me? It would kindly tell me that it's syntactically valid to call (string-downcase 3), even though that will produce a noisy error. So if I wanted to list all of the things I can do with 3, we would be here for a long time.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  > unlike Java it will not complain that it has no idea how to "lower" 3. AttributeError is a complaint, isn't it?
  - drostie 15y ago
    I thought you were arguing against the magic of Python. :P The point I'm making is I suppose one about personal mental hygiene, but I am choosing an odd language for it. Because I am talking about how computers can reason for us, and can help us reason. Python will not complain about x.lower() until it actually occurs; it doesn't reason at all about x. On the other hand, the Python interpreter gives you some leeway to sit inside the code as it's being run, to say "okay, what can I do with x now that I have it?" -- which is a start. It's especially pivotal for me when I'm working with an external software package which isn't well-documented. I hate working with someone else's packages in Lisp. With Python, I can usually reverse-engineer what they were thinking pretty easily. With Java, your code editor provides another method to do the same thing, preventing you from writing things which wouldn't have made sense to the package designers -- this helps you know what does make sense, to help you understand what they were thinking. Like I said, my broader point is about mental hygiene, and there is a missing connection between mental hygiene and what computers can do for me. I think this is best summarized by Minsky and Sussman's reminder: "programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood and sloppily formulated ideas." That's the missing connection. When I have a function which I don't completely understand, assigning it to a namespace helps me to be formal and precise about the situations where it is useful, and allows me to reason about the situations where it is not useful. So for all that it might pride me that I can just look up the array API on developer.mozilla.org and quickly learn the difference between "shift", "splice", and "unshift", that's not as important to me. It's something more poignant that interests me, something about how, when I have a string, my brain quickly reasons about what functions are correct for it. I don't know how much Hungarian notation you've worked with, but the property-based notation has some Hungarian quirk to it where you can just feel that you've got the right sort of expression.
    - mattdeboard 15y ago
      Exceptions are magic?
      - drostie 15y ago
        What?

drostie 15y ago

In Python that actually makes some amount of sense, because Python ships with something like five different sorts of lists (arrays, lists, tuples, OrderedDicts, generators) and it's a reasonably generic idea. And it helps that for the one 'proper' case of this, lists, Python also supports list.sort(), so that "it is where it's supposed to be" as well. The only problem with list.sort() in Python is that it's void; it returns None. It should either return self (and sort self) or return a sorted copy of self, like sorted() will. On the other hand, in JavaScript, array.sort() is known to be a little broken: > [48, 19, 7, 14, 30, 22, 45].sort() [14, 19, 22, 30, 45, 48, 7] Wat. It's true that I have ultimate responsibility for my code, and it's true that in Python I can write: x = 3 x.lower() ...and unlike Java it will not complain that it has no idea how to "lower" 3. But it still suggests like Java suggests that we're going to narrow down the wildly branching tree of possibilities. When I'm sitting in the Python REPL, and I have an object x, I'll often just call dir(x), to see what I can do with it. What would Common Lisp tell me? It would kindly tell me that it's syntactically valid to call (string-downcase 3), even though that will produce a noisy error. So if I wanted to list all of the things I can do with 3, we would be here for a long time.

mattdeboard 15y ago
> unlike Java it will not complain that it has no idea how to "lower" 3. AttributeError is a complaint, isn't it?
- drostie 15y ago
  I thought you were arguing against the magic of Python. :P The point I'm making is I suppose one about personal mental hygiene, but I am choosing an odd language for it. Because I am talking about how computers can reason for us, and can help us reason. Python will not complain about x.lower() until it actually occurs; it doesn't reason at all about x. On the other hand, the Python interpreter gives you some leeway to sit inside the code as it's being run, to say "okay, what can I do with x now that I have it?" -- which is a start. It's especially pivotal for me when I'm working with an external software package which isn't well-documented. I hate working with someone else's packages in Lisp. With Python, I can usually reverse-engineer what they were thinking pretty easily. With Java, your code editor provides another method to do the same thing, preventing you from writing things which wouldn't have made sense to the package designers -- this helps you know what does make sense, to help you understand what they were thinking. Like I said, my broader point is about mental hygiene, and there is a missing connection between mental hygiene and what computers can do for me. I think this is best summarized by Minsky and Sussman's reminder: "programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood and sloppily formulated ideas." That's the missing connection. When I have a function which I don't completely understand, assigning it to a namespace helps me to be formal and precise about the situations where it is useful, and allows me to reason about the situations where it is not useful. So for all that it might pride me that I can just look up the array API on developer.mozilla.org and quickly learn the difference between "shift", "splice", and "unshift", that's not as important to me. It's something more poignant that interests me, something about how, when I have a string, my brain quickly reasons about what functions are correct for it. I don't know how much Hungarian notation you've worked with, but the property-based notation has some Hungarian quirk to it where you can just feel that you've got the right sort of expression.
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    Exceptions are magic?
    - drostie 15y ago
      What?