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I’d argue that every language is loaded full of foot guns. If you’re encountering those foot guns on a regular basis, it’s an issue with the author. That said,

I’d argue that every language is loaded full of foot guns. If you’re encountering those foot guns on a regular basis, it’s an issue with the author. That said, what can help drastically here are well-defined best practices and conventions built into the language which, admittedly, bash really doesn’t have.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Can you point to 3 python foot guns, for instance?
- s1dev 3y ago
  I’m generally in agreement with the anti-bash camp, but I can name about that many :) - Mutating default arguments to functions, so subsequent calls have different behavior - Somewhat particular rules around creating references vs copies - Things that look like lambda captures but aren’t quite
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    Touche!
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yep, every language has footguns and other kinds of quirks, but I contend that the "footguns per character" ratio in shell is unusually high. (It is not unique in having a high ratio though; other popular languages, like c++ for instance, also have this issue.)
    - eitland 3y ago
      The worst (level of nastyness * usage) offenders all probably have a reason for being popular despite their flaws: - Bash: installed everywhere you want to work (yes, who actually wants to work on Windows ;-) - C/C++: when speed/size matters there was no alternative except Assembly until recently - Javascript: until recently this was the most sane option for client side code on the web (Active X and Java applets existed yes but managed to be even worse.) - PHP: Low cost hosting, Function-As-A-Service way before that became popular, shared nothing architecture, instant reload for local development bliss
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        Couldn't agree more.
  - bonzini 3y ago
    - string vs. list "in" ('a' in 'a' is True, but 'a' in ['a'] is also True) - cannot know which object attributes are private or public (and some classes use settable properties so you can't say "just don't set any attributes on non-dataclass objects")

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

Can you point to 3 python foot guns, for instance?

s1dev 3y ago
I’m generally in agreement with the anti-bash camp, but I can name about that many :) - Mutating default arguments to functions, so subsequent calls have different behavior - Somewhat particular rules around creating references vs copies - Things that look like lambda captures but aren’t quite
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Touche!
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yep, every language has footguns and other kinds of quirks, but I contend that the "footguns per character" ratio in shell is unusually high. (It is not unique in having a high ratio though; other popular languages, like c++ for instance, also have this issue.)
  - eitland 3y ago
    The worst (level of nastyness * usage) offenders all probably have a reason for being popular despite their flaws: - Bash: installed everywhere you want to work (yes, who actually wants to work on Windows ;-) - C/C++: when speed/size matters there was no alternative except Assembly until recently - Javascript: until recently this was the most sane option for client side code on the web (Active X and Java applets existed yes but managed to be even worse.) - PHP: Low cost hosting, Function-As-A-Service way before that became popular, shared nothing architecture, instant reload for local development bliss
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Couldn't agree more.
- bonzini 3y ago
  - string vs. list "in" ('a' in 'a' is True, but 'a' in ['a'] is also True) - cannot know which object attributes are private or public (and some classes use settable properties so you can't say "just don't set any attributes on non-dataclass objects")