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Modern Programming
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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That's the native python version, for those curious
The ternary syntax is really my only real gripe with python design -- putting the conditional BETWEEN the true and false values feels so very messy to me.
Eh, reads pretty naturally to me. That said,
(like I lisp)Lisps makes more sense to me though
(if condition a b)
VS
a if condition else b
I was more talking about
(+ a b)and such.Oh, (you) (really) (like) (Lisp)? (That's) (great!)
(is great (oh (really (like-p lisp you))))It's kinda natural to me having used Perl a lot.
That's not quite the argument you might think it is
Argument?
You know, the stuff in @_
heheh. I wasn't really making an argument though
The joke was that Perl is a clusterfuck
It certainly has its issues. I find that the things people have trouble with are the things I tend to like about it. Of course, reading it later is a problem sometimes. :)
Write only language!
I still reach for it sometimes.
The point of code is to be read by other humans, not just computers.
Sure. Nothing stopping you writing readable well commented perl. Just avoid some of the more terse statements. It can be a challenge though.
Shrug. If you don't like Perl, don't use it.
But I want to mock it good-naturedly, too.
A lots of things stop you from writing readable Perl code.
You have to forget half of the syntax first. Set perlcritic to max. Force whitespaces.
Download ton of packages for every little thing and hope they are cool with each other.
And still deal with edge cases that make you pluck your eyes out.
FVO readable for future me, it's not so bad. I don't have to worry about other people so much. :)
You clearly haven't used Perl a lot. Perl's ternary looks like:
$even = $num % 2 ? "nay" : "yay";
Incidentally, it is also the same as PHP's, but mainly because PHP stole it.
You do get the if in the middle of stuff though in the form print(debug message) if $debug
Wait until you learn that postfix conditionals are syntactic sugar and the compiler* turns that line into the equivalent of
$debug and print(debug message), putting the conditional in first place, a lot like the ternary operator.* Perl compiles to bytecode before running.
The ternary operator itself isn't implemented in terms of
and(andor) but it could be.Luckily I don't need to read or write bytecode and all that matters to me is the syntax
perl -e 'print "fart\n" if 1;'At least you guys have ternary syntax cries in kotlin.
It's really special to not have ternary, but have Elvis.
in Scala, everything is an expression, including “if”, maybe kotlin is the same?
I think it's just what you're used to. Imo it really matters that it's keywords and not operator symbols - it's meant to read closer to natural language. I prefer the c version when it's ? and :, but I like them this way round when it's if and else.
That's way too non-convoluted enough
Python is kinda like that in general, unless you try to make it read like ass
You would not believe the number of people I’ve interviewed who excel at making Python read like ass.
I mean, it does have enough ways to write the same thing that it can really allow for some funny code golf, but some people just have no sense of readability whatsoever.
Clearly an inferior language. /s
Why is the return first?
I think the idea is it reads more naturally, so you can read it like this
return A if statement is true else return BYep, it's this
Is it really more natural for a non-programmer than "if statement is true than a else b"? I can't evaluate because of decades of C, so for me the python logic is still bizarre.
Maybe?
For C at least it doesn't have the actual words, so you need to know what the specific symbols are
var = condition ? a : b. In that expression we don't know what a or b are in regards to the condition.Python literally is
a if condition else b, so it reads out what is being done.Edit... I reread your comment and realized that python does it differently and that everything I typed was irrelevant... I'm still gonna leave it if anyone is interested in ternary expressions, but I suppose the answer to your question is, that's just how python does it.
That's how ternary operators are designed to work. In essence, if you're looking to do a single line if/then, you can directly assign a variable from the result of a ternary expression.
As an example, I was scripting something earlier where there may or may not be a value returned from a function, but I still had to do something with that return value later. For this thing, I was using JavaScript.
I ended up with:
If I were to write that out in a typical if/then it would be:
A ternary starts with a boolean expression, then the if true value, else the false value. That's returned to either a variable or if in a function like my example, to the object calling the function. It's just a way to write less code that in many cases is easier to read.
Oh wow, I think I hate that... Condition between the results? Yuck.