E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

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PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

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I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

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This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Enforcing Style

Browsing some programming blogs this evening I came across Ken Arnold's provocative "Style is Substance" post from October 2004. In it, he argues that coding style variants should be eliminated by including style in the language definition:

...the only way to get from where we are to a place where we stop worrying about style is to enforce it as part of the language.

This isn't that shocking to Python programmers (perhaps that's why he mentions Python twice in his list of "mature" languages?). Python enforces whitespace style. To me this is one of the great joys of working with Python -- my code from two years ago, or somebody else's code in an open-source project I'm looking at, uses exactly the same indentation "conventions" that I do -- because they're not conventions, they're requirements.

After reading Guido's "Stricter Whitespace Enforcement" document last April 1, I thought, "I know this is a joke, but bring it on anyway!"

Sunday, April 30th, 2006
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2 comments

Some related posts: dpaste.com • TextMate command for paste.e-scribe.com • Pastebin update: Pygments • The "path" module • Johnny can too code • The twenty-minute trouble ticket system • "Reverse" game update -- my language safari • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • Ajaxy regex tester in Python: retest • CodeZoo
• Comment from Bob, 2 days later

"In it, he argues that coding style variants should be eliminated by including style in the language definition:"

Why? There really is NO good reason to do this. In many languages there are already ways to enforce this.

• Comment from Paul, 2 days later

Sorry -- I left out the link to the article! It's there now. I think you'll see that his reasons for suggesting it, and for thinking it's good, are pretty clear, though certainly controversial. I think he'd likely say that "ways to enforce" equates to a voluntary system, and if it's voluntary then there will be style wars.

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