3 ms·

> C is very performant, and hard to code in, so people just use python as a abstraction layer over C. C is a way of life. Those of us who code exclusively, or

by sgbeal 3y ago

> C is very performant, and hard to code in, so people just use python as a abstraction layer over C. C is a way of life. Those of us who code exclusively, or nearly so, in C cannot stomach python's notion of "significant white-space."

yoyohello13 3y ago
I code in both (c for hobbies and python professionally) and “significant white space” is a non-issue if you spend any amount of time getting used to it. Complaining about significant white-space is like complaining that lisp has too many parentheses. It’s an aesthetic preference that just doesn’t matter in practice.
- adventured 3y ago
  A form of Sayre's Law is very common in tech (eg spaces vs tabs; framework vs framework; language vs language).
adolph 3y ago
> cannot stomach python's notion of "significant white-space." Why belly ache about it? Whitespace is significant to one’s fellow humans.
- boredtofears 3y ago
  Precisely why it should be of no significance to the machine.
  - drdrey 3y ago
    Source code is not for the machine to read, it’s for your fellow humans
    - boredtofears 3y ago
      That doesn't mean that source code has no meaning to the interpreter.
Phemist 3y ago
Wait till you start using the black formatter tool. Well-known for supporting any formatting style you like ;)
dboreham 3y ago
You get used to the significant whitespace. (C programmer since ~1978).
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  I never did, and it's one of the things I hate most about Python to this day. I still use Python because it's the best tool a lot of the time, but it's such a terrible language decision to have significant whitespace imo.
bart_spoon 3y ago
All programming languages, including C, have significant white space. Python just has slightly more.
mhh__ 3y ago
I actually find python and C very similar in spirit. Syntax is mostly an irrelevance, they have surprisingly similar patterns in my opinion. In a modern language I want a type system that both reduces risk and reduces typing — safety and metaprogramming. C obviously doesn't, python doesn't really either. Python's approach to dynamic-ness is very similar to how I'd expect C to be as a dynamic language (if it had proper arrays/lists).

by sgbeal 3y ago

yoyohello13 3y ago

I code in both (c for hobbies and python professionally) and “significant white space” is a non-issue if you spend any amount of time getting used to it. Complaining about significant white-space is like complaining that lisp has too many parentheses. It’s an aesthetic preference that just doesn’t matter in practice.

adventured 3y ago
A form of Sayre's Law is very common in tech (eg spaces vs tabs; framework vs framework; language vs language).

adolph 3y ago

> cannot stomach python's notion of "significant white-space." Why belly ache about it? Whitespace is significant to one’s fellow humans.

boredtofears 3y ago
Precisely why it should be of no significance to the machine.
- drdrey 3y ago
  Source code is not for the machine to read, it’s for your fellow humans
  - boredtofears 3y ago
    That doesn't mean that source code has no meaning to the interpreter.

Phemist 3y ago

Wait till you start using the black formatter tool. Well-known for supporting any formatting style you like ;)

dboreham 3y ago

You get used to the significant whitespace. (C programmer since ~1978).

bigstrat2003 3y ago
I never did, and it's one of the things I hate most about Python to this day. I still use Python because it's the best tool a lot of the time, but it's such a terrible language decision to have significant whitespace imo.

bart_spoon 3y ago

All programming languages, including C, have significant white space. Python just has slightly more.

mhh__ 3y ago

I actually find python and C very similar in spirit. Syntax is mostly an irrelevance, they have surprisingly similar patterns in my opinion. In a modern language I want a type system that both reduces risk and reduces typing — safety and metaprogramming. C obviously doesn't, python doesn't really either. Python's approach to dynamic-ness is very similar to how I'd expect C to be as a dynamic language (if it had proper arrays/lists).