Comment by pino999
2 months ago
They call it like that, but it depends on the programmer as always. The problem is, that it is really flexible, more so than python or javascript, so it gives you all the tools to shoot yourself in the foot and take away the leg with it.
An example, you can rewrite the calling program in a module.(https://metacpan.org/pod/Acme::Bleach orhttps://metacpan.org/release/DCONWAY/Lingua-Romana-Perligata...)
While cool for jokes or serious DSL's, it may lead to difficult to understand code. (Nothing wrong with Damian Conway btw, I just remembered he used source filters in interesting ways).
> They call it like that, but it depends on the programmer as always.
There are different styles, but in general they are concise, and I like them.
perl use various sigils to remain concise, while other languages take a lot of room on the screen: too many letters in the usual function names, not enough sigils within the language.
It's like if everything was in binary or hex, instead of using the full range of ASCII: while technically possible, it may be harder to fit into your head
Python has one sub-style I dislike the most: using tabs for indentation, because how much EXTRA room they use on the screen.
It must not just be me, as there are solutions for coloring the spaces (I forked https://github.com/csdvrx/indent-rainbow to focus on black-and-white and using spaces instead of tabs)
I use space to limit the issue, but I can't make python less verbose.
> it gives you all the tools to shoot yourself in the foot and take away the leg with it.
python isn't innocent either: I recently traced a issue where exit(0) wasn't working to a threading problem, making a bad use of atexit.
> tabs for indentation
I don’t know a single Python project that does it. You can’t mix space and tabs for indentation.
4 spaces is the default for Python formatters like black, ruff (not sure whether it is configurable—never tried to change).
Big indent is a feature—deep nesting is a code smell.
> Python has one sub-style I dislike the most: using tabs for indentation, because how much EXTRA room they use on the screen.
Can you not adjust your tab stops?
I hate it too, because tabs look like spaces and they have a different syntactic meaning
I can, in vim it's simple. It just bothers me that it is the default and I have to take care of tabs with the rainbow, or a toggle shortcut like:
function TabCollapse_Toggle() abort
BTW if you hate tabs looking like other characters and other invisible characters (like spaces at the end of line, non breaking spaces...), I have a solution in CuteVim (https://github.com/csdvrx/CuteVim : just run the portable executable) where I mapped it by default to a Fxx key
If you already use vim, here's the relevant part: assuming your Shift-F11 is free, add to your vimrc:
" Default is off, `se list` to turn on and `se nolist` to turn off
" Traditional with ISO-8859-1:
"set listchars=tab:»·space:_,trail:·,eol:¶
" Or cuter with unicodes:
set listchars=tab:↹⇥,space:_,nbsp:␣,trail:•,extends:⟩,precedes:⟨,eol:↲
set showbreak=↪
inoremap <silent> <S-F11> <Esc>:set list!<CR>
noremap <silent> <S-F11> :set list!<CR>
Shift-F11 will then become a toggle, to show you tabs: you will see ↹ where the tab starts, and ⇥ for how long it is
>Can you not adjust your tab stops?
I've used this in vim for years:
:se expandtab tabstop=4 shiftwidth=4
(those can be abbreviated, check docs)
Then:
I use only tabs for indentation.
All the tabs get expanded to four spaces each.
Indenting and unindenting lines or blocks of lines, moves them by four spaces.
Never had a problem.
Maybe there are more fancy ways, but this works fine for me.
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