Hacker News Reader

> For me, Python is a good (though not ideal) mix of simple syntax and power. The language is characterized by low redundancy, meaning it uses fewer unnecessary characters like semicolons or curly braces to mark the end of a line. If a human can recognize the end of a line without special characters, then the compiler should be able to as well. […] Even a brief look at Rust’s syntax

That’s a shame because you’re missing that these sigils actually have meaning there, because the semantics of the language are completely different: Python is statements-based with very limited scoping (global and function), Rust is expression based with block scoping.

As a result, blocks (paired braces) are a way to pack multiple statements into an expression e.g.

    let v = {
        let a = thing1();
        let b = thing2();
        thing3(a, b)
    };

And `;` is not an alias for end-of-line, it’s a separator for statements.

And not aliasing end-of-line to end-of-statement is relevant to rust being expression oriented, it’s very common for expressions to span multiple lines, in that case Python requires either wrapping the entire thing in parenthesis or escaping the EOL with `\`.

Could you find other ways to do this? Sure, but then you have to make other tradeoffs e.g. wrap everything in matching symbols à la lisp, or make statements into special cases à la Haskell.

Wrapping 99% of things in {} seems worse than wrapping 1% of things in ()

That looks very clean, though the deviation from OCaml takes a minute to get used to.

> And `;` is not an alias for end-of-line, it’s a separator for statements.

And in Python \n is not an alias for end-of-line, it’s a separator for statements.

> the semantics of the language are completely different: Python is statements-based with very limited scoping (global and function), Rust is expression based with block scoping.

This is a red herring. Haskell, CoffeeScript, Nim, Lean, etc. are expression-oriented and use indentation like Python, while C(++), Java, JavaScript, etc. are statement-oriented and use braces.

> Making syntax as “human-readable” as possible should always be the highest priority. We could unlock so much potential this way.

I think there is a balance to strike here.

I often like to work with code by cutting and pasting sections around and then hitting the format hotkey to align everything.

I enjoy the guarantee that as long as the syntax is correct, it doesn't matter how I type out the code because I'll just hit the formatter hotkey immediately afterwards and it will apply the correct indentation and lay it all out nicely

Obviously that's impossible in Python and it makes working with it really frustrating to me, it feels so delicate, I almost don't want to touch the code because I'm always accidentally changing the indentation, it's a real limit of this "human-readable" syntax in my opinion.

That’s definitely possible in Python. Maybe not if you’re using the simplest text editor. But regardless of whether it’s NVIM or Visual Studio Code, you can easily jump to the end of a line, press Return, and the code will be inserted with the correct indentation. RUFF or BLACK do the rest, and they do it quite intelligently.

Oh interesting, I didn't know! How reliable is it? Does it work well even if you partly copy functions / with blocks etc. ?

I just tried it in vscode, it didn't work at all, copy pasted a single line to another function and it kept its indentation and vscode showed a pylance error about unexpected indentation.

I just have the official Python extension by Microsoft, perhaps some more configuration is required?

I don't really write any Python, I'm sure there is a way to improve the experience.

> Obviously that's impossible in Python and it makes working with it really frustrating to me, it feels so delicate, I almost don't want to touch the code because I'm always accidentally changing the indentation

Skill issue. I just press my “paste with correct indentation” hotkey and move on.

> Unfortunately, we still live in an era where humans have to adapt to technology rather than the other way around. From my perspective, this is particularly true for programming.

I think it's interesting that you say this, and point it towards Python.

Personally, with Python's significant whitespace, I feel more constrained writing code in a style that I prefer, with the computer requiring me to adapt to it, compared to other languages. I see code with braces and semi-colons more freeing because I get more control over the line structure.

At the end of the day, it's all stylistic personal preference. Python isn't the evolutionary ideal form for programming languages, it's just what some people prefer.

The Saint-Exupéry quote applies to Lisp, may in some manner apply to Python 2.7, but certainly not to Python 3.12.

Many people here argue that braces do provide some structure that helps in understanding and navigating the program. Python files over 100 lines with a lot of if-statements become syntactically unreadable.

So taking them away does not help.

Generally, minimalism (except for the Lisp-style one) is not always good. Python is called executable pseudo-code. Do academics use it to specify algorithms?

No, most still use some form of Pascal/Algol style syntax, which conveys the meaning much better.

> The Saint-Exupéry quote applies to Lisp, may in some manner apply to Python 2.7, but certainly not to Python 3.12.

Is the syntax not about 80% the same? And isn't most of that "same simple syntax" commonly used daily?

> Many people here argue that braces do provide some structure that helps in understanding and navigating the program. Python files over 100 lines with a lot of if-statements become syntactically unreadable.

That's probably True. But poor programming discipline and syntax that eases reading problematic code also contribute to this issue.

> So taking them away does not help. For me it actually promotes better coding style and hygiene.

> Generally, minimalism (except for the Lisp-style one) is not always good. The quote was about perfectionism, not minimalism.

There is already nothing left to take away before you've made anything, so just don't start the project and you have perfection.