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Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2012 03:58:43 +0100
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Subject: Re: Feedback on my python framework I'm building.
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:31234

On 2012-10-14 03:25, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:24:04 -0700, nbvfour wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, October 13, 2012 2:33:43 PM UTC-4, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>>
>>> Nice theory, but this is the bit that I fundamentally disagree with.
>>> Forcing programmers to work in one particular style is usually not the
>>> job of the language/framework/library. That should be up to the
>>> programmer, or at least the local style guide.
>>
>> Have you ever read the zen of python? "Theres only one way to do it" is
>> a core motto of the python language.
>
> Have *you* ever read the Zen of Python? The line from the Zen is:
>
> "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."
>
> Paraphrasing for emphasis:
>
> There SHOULD be one (or more, but one is best) OBVIOUS way to do it.
>
> as opposed to languages where there are no obvious ways to things, or
> thirty.
>
> Don't believe me that the emphasis is on *obvious* rather than "only"?
> The very next line of the Zen tells you:
>
> "Although that way may not be OBVIOUS at first unless you're Dutch."
>
> [emphasis added]
>
> Not being Dutch, I don't know whether the obvious way to do command line
> argument handling is the getopt module or argparse. But there certainly
> isn't *only one way* to do command line argument handling.
>
> It is a gross canard, mostly spread by Perl programmers, that Python is
> "limited" to "only one way to do it" and therefore isn't as good as Perl
> which gives you "more freedom" (to write unreadable, unmaintainable code).
>
> It simply isn't true that Python only gives you "only one way". The
> acronym OOWTDI stands for *one obvious way to do it*.
>
I think it's the "Paradox of Choice".

The more choices there are, the more time you'll spend trying to decide
which one is "best".