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Comment by vph | Hacker News Reader

The problem with 80 chars/line and Python, in particular, is list/dict comprehension. Naturally, as they replace a whole loop, comprehensions pack much information into one line. Consequently, there are many times when a list/dict-comprehension line that are clean and meaningful but had to be broken into 2 lines.

And that isn't nice.

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Having a list comprehension in 2 lines is really a problem? I find very readable something like

  result = [something(value) + value * 2
            for value in values]

I mean, I prefer one line, but if it has be in two (or more lines), I don't see the problem really

Actually, with a minor tweak this gets even more readable -

    result = [something(value) + value*2
                for value in values]

I find indenting the subcaluse makes my eye flow naturally over the code. I'm normally doing this in perl, and often end up with functionalish code that looks like

    my @result = map { something($_) + $_*2 }
                   grep { valid_candidate($_) }
                     @all_candidates;

but the same principle seems to apply nicely to both languages.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

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