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Comment by gpderetta | Hacker News Reader

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gpderetta

Things I love about python:

- minimalist syntax

- very gentle learning curve

- yet an extremely powerful language

- interactive development

- and of course the library ecosystem

Things I mildly dislike about python but at the end of the day are not a big deal:

- dynamic typing

- significant whitespace

- scoping rules

- dependencies

Things I really hate about python:

- error messages (I *genuinely* find it easier and more pleasant to debug 1000 lines long template metaprogramming backtraces in C++)

- horrible performance

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I like significant whitespace in Python, and wish other languages used it instead of brackets or whatever. There, I said it!

Love it, was a masterstroke. Less is more. Needs trivial editor support, however.

If you’re having trouble I suggest showing leading whitespace in the editor with a very low contrast grey highlight color. Ended all issues for me a decade or two ago. Indentation guides help any language as well. Simple editors like Geany can handle it well.

Unfortunately, Python has gone backwards with the adding of colons everywhere. Pseudocode aspect has sadly been lost imho.

Agreed. I’m getting more annoyed by seemingly-unnecessary characters these days. Are the colons after if/for/etc really needed for parsing? Could they be made optional, as JS has done for semicolons?

Those were always there and I think read well due to following prose conventions. Was thinking about typing syntax and walrus.

I like it, I just wish they had specifically disallowed tabs. Nothing against them, but allowing a mix of tabs and spaces was a horrible idea. They should have settled on one.

I consider dealing with that as my karmic punishment for copy/pasting code off the internet!

Have you tried Python 3.10? They've significantly improved the error messages:

https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.10.html#better-error-me...

Thanks, that seems a big improvement.

You could also perhaps look at https://friendly-traceback.github.io/docs/index.html

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