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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Python (was Re: I did not inhale)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:42:33 +0200
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On 30/08/2024 17:14, John Ames wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 21:27:36 +0200
> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
> 
>> /All/ languages, except perhaps Bart's private language that is only
>> used by him, have their annoyances.  I have worked at least a little
>> with a fair number of languages, and I've never seen one that I
>> thought was "perfect".  But different people have different things
>> that the like and dislike about any given language.
>>
>> So if you have the choice of which language to use (many programmers
>> do not), you pick one that has more things you like for the task in
>> question in comparison to the things you don't like.
> 
> Sure - but picking one that best suits your needs doesn't mean you
> can't critique its annoyances/flaws. This team-sports mentality is just
> weird.

(I gather the politically correct response to that is "I'm not weird - 
/you/ are weird" :-) )

There's a difference between critiquing something and saying the 
language designers were stupid.  I can say I prefer explicit blocking 
delimiters.  I can give reasons why I think those are better than 
white-space based blocks.  But to have any kind of useful discussion, 
you need to be able to consider what advantages the alternatives have, 
and think about why some people might have different opinions.  Writing 
"I get lost with white-space indentation and have to add lots of 
comments - therefore the language is flawed and the designers made 
stupid decisions" is not helpful critique - it's just ranting.

Of course you will find things you dislike about any language you use. 
And discussing those things, and ways to mitigate their impact, is also 
fine.  It's the "this language is fundamentally flawed because /I/ 
dislike a particular aspect of it" attitude I disagree with.

> 
>> But it's important to understand that these are opinions - the
>> designers of Python were /not/ stupid to have made the language that
>> way.  They just had different opinions from you, and the had a much
>> better basis for forming those opinions than you or I.
> 
> Yeah, well, your opinion that my opinion is just, like, my opinion is
> just, like, your opinion, man.
>