[Python-Dev] Informal educator feedback on PEP 572 (was Re: 2018 Python Language Summit coverage, last part) (original) (raw)

Michael Selik mike at selik.org
Sun Jun 24 17:35:46 EDT 2018

This thread started with a request for educator feedback, which I took to mean observations of student reactions. I've only had the chance to test the proposal on ~20 students so far, but I'd like the chance to gather more data for your consideration before the PEP is accepted or rejected.

On Sun, Jun 24, 2018 at 11:09 AM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

Remember, the driving use-case which started this (ever-so-long) discussion was the ability to push data into a comprehension and then update it on each iteration, something like this:

x = initialvalue() results = [x := transform(x, i) for i in sequence]

If that is the driving use-case, then the proposal should be rejected. The itertools.accumulate function has been available for a little while now and it handles this exact case. The accumulate function may even be more readable, as it explains the purpose explicitly, not merely the algorithm. And heck, it's a one-liner.

results = accumulate(sequence, transform)

The benefits for any and all seem useful. Itertools has "first_seen" in the recipes section. While it feels intuitively useful, I can't recall ever writing something similar myself. For some reason, I (almost?) always want to find all (counter-)examples and aggregate them in some way -- min or max, perhaps -- rather than just get the first.

Even so, if it turns out those uses are quite prevalent, wouldn't a new itertool be better than a new operator? It's good to solve the general problem, but so far the in-comprehension usage seems to have only a handful of cases.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 9:14 PM Chris Barker via Python-Dev < python-dev at python.org> wrote:

again, not a huge deal, just a little bit more complexity

I worry that Python may experience something of a "death by a thousand cuts" along the lines of the "Remember the Vasa" warning. Python's greatest strength is its appeal to beginners. Little bits of added complexity have a non-linear effect. One day, we may wake up and Python won't be recommended as a beginner's language.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 7:48 PM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 10:59:43AM -0700, Michael Selik wrote:

Of course they do -- they're less fluent at reading code. They don't have the experience to judge good code from bad.

On the other hand, an "expert" may be so steeped in a particular subculture that he no longer can distinguish esoteric from intuitive. Don't be so fast to reject the wisdom of the inexperienced.

The question we should be asking is, do we only add features to Python if they are easy for beginners? It's not that I especially want to add features which aren't easy for beginners, but Python isn't Scratch and "easy for beginners" should only be a peripheral concern.

On the contrary, I believe that "easy for beginners" should be a major concern. Ease of use has been and is a, or even the main reason for Python's success. When some other language becomes a better teaching language, it will eventually take over in business and science as well. Right now, Python is Scratch for adults. That's a great thing. Given the growth of the field, there are far more beginner programmers working today than there ever have been experts.

Mozilla's array comprehensions are almost identical to Python's, aside

from a couple of trivial differences:

I can't prove it, but I think the phrase ordering difference is not trivial.

Students who are completely new to programming can see the similarity of > [Python] list comprehensions to spoken language.

I've been using comprehensions for something like a decade, and I can't

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