[Python-Dev] Chaining try statements: eltry? (original) (raw)

François Pinard pinard at iro.umontreal.ca
Thu Jul 7 21:16:34 CEST 2005

[Guido van Rossum]

On 7/7/05, François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: > [Guido van Rossum]

> > I even wonder if else-clauses on for/while were a good idea.

> I surely find them useful, and see them as a Python originality (a > welcome one).

The question remains whether Python would be easier to learn without them.

Some of my co-workers, while being very dedicated and efficient to the production duties, are not especially fond on computer languages, and have only moderate pleasure learning them. They are very good people nevertheless! :-) After PL/I, C, some obscure languages you do not even know, and now Python, they receive it as just yet another in the series, and they accept taming themselves, slowly, around Python. I saw that the else:' clause to for' and while' has been a surprise to them, and observe that they usually do not readily recognise cases where it would be useful. Yet, others in the gang are more enthusiastic, and they do not trip at all over various else:'s. So, it much depends on the kind of relation between programmers and languages.

You know, Python would be easier to learn without all __xyz__' methods, and without meta-classes :-). [Yet my feeling is that people overdo the difficulty of meta-classes, which do not deserve the prejudice they got.] The learning curve of else:' is much smoother by comparison. `else:' are useful in my experience, as I know I used stunts for years in other languages for achieving about the same effect. These are for elementary or basic day-to-day algorithms, and I cannot believe common problems are so different between a programmer and another.

All hard to assess impartially!

Granted. That's why I throw my opinion in this forum.

-- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca

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