[Python-Dev] Conditional For Statements (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Mon May 19 14:33:02 CEST 2008

On Mon, 19 May 2008 08:42:29 pm Lennart Regebro wrote:

How was it again? "One and only one way"? :-)

Certainly not. What on earth gave you the idea that that ridiculous statement is a Python philosophy? I know some Perl developers like to contrast the supposed flexibility of Perl ("more than one way to do it") with the imagined poverty of Python, but that really is a silly claim to make about any Turing Complete language. If nothing else, any programming language that lets you perform arithmetic would not be so restrictive:

x = (1+2)3 + 33

x = (3+2)3 + 13

Which one should the compiler prohibit?

I strongly suggest that you look at the Zen of Python:

import this The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters ... There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

There should be ONE OBVIOUS way to do it, not "only one way".

-- Steven

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