As I was curious, I today tested whether you can use a dash in a file name with Python — or, more specifically, if you can use that file as a module afterwards. You cannot. So don’t name your files with dashes.

(This might be in a manual somewhere, but I hadn’t seen it explicitly mentioned. Maybe it’s just common sense since you can’t name your variables that way either, I don’t know)

I don’t mind Python’s indenting. Sure, it took a little time to get used to it, coming from PHP with all its braces. But it wasn’t really hard.

The only problem I see with its indenting, is the fact that it’s variable. You can use a single space, two spaces, three spaces, […] Heck, you can use 32 spaces or even tabs. Flexibility is often good, but this introduces a problem, which has been touched upon a lot by others as well: Different programmers end up with different tab indexes, making their coding conventions non-interoperable.

To make matters worse, Python treats a tab as an 8 space indent. So the following could happen: one programmer uses tabs as indents, has them shown as 4 spaces, and hacks away happily. Then someone else takes a look at the code in their editor. He might be using an 8 space indent, and so there should be no problems. He edits the code a bit, then sends it back to number one. He then gets mighty confused — why is there all of a sudden a double indent there?

You see how this can scale and get out of control, don’t you?

So what do I propose, in order to fix this? I see two solutions, the one preferable, the other one realistic:

1. Add one standard way of indenting. This should go well with the There’s Only One Way to Do It-philosophy, and should stop all these problems. I could easily settle on 2 spaces, 8 spaces or tabs, just as long as there was this single way. This won’t happen, however. There’s too much code out there, with different indents.
2. A conventional way of commenting the chosen indent. There is already conventions used for commenting the character set among other things, and this should just be one more line to add to the template. # -*- indent: 2 -*- or # -*- indent: tab -*- should do the trick. If this convention catches on, in time editors might even learn to read this, and adjusting the indent to this value. That would be great.

These are my suggestions. I hope someone influential in the Python community sees this, and agrees with me. We need to sort this out, and this could be a way of doing this.

Where you live, should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die

In my post about web.py I touched upon the fact that I don’t like web.py’s way of defining URL’s, that I find it too loose. Well, it’s a minor problem, but rather trivial to solve, so I did. As quoted in the original post, there is a bit more typing, but I personally prefer this solution. (To be fair, the example I gave in the original post can be applied to this code as well, but I’d say this makes it a tiny bit more readable):

def webpyurl(_tuple):
    """
    Map a structured tuple to a url that web.py will accept.

    Turns a tuple of the format
    (
        ('a', 'b'),
        ('c', 'd')
    )
    into
    (
        'a', 'b',
        'c', 'd'
    )

    Rather simple, but can make a huge difference in readability.

    @require enhancedappend()
    """

    thislist = []

    for (a,b) in _tuple:
        enhancedappend(thislist, a, b)

    return tuple(thislist)

def enhancedappend(_list, *appends):
    """
    list.append only takes 1 argument, this allows for more to be added
    """

    for append in appends:
        _list.append(append)

This code is also available on pyhacker.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?

Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now, controls the past.
Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now?

Got to be good looking, because he’s so hard to see.

I’m so fed up with the expression “the real world”. First of all, it asserts that there is such a thing as an unreal world — a fake world perhaps — and second, it has no defined meaning.

When I was in base school, I would be told that when I entered the real world, something would happen — the real world being high school.

Now that I’m in high school, the real world means either university or the job market.

And at my job, the real world means my spare time.

Seriously, can’t we collectively settle on calling the things what they are. There’s no need to hide them behind a meaningless term. There’s no need to talk about whatever state you’re in at the moment, as being something unreal. By doing this, we’re merely trying to strive for something in the future, removing all focus and positive things from our current position. That’s neither healthy nor very intelligent.

If you’re talking about anything other than dreams, fiction stories or the likes, you’re talking about the real world. Face it.

I dag har min skole, Vestre Borgerdyd, skiftet navn til Københavns åbne Gymnasium (KG). Dette ses som led i en fornyelsesproces skolen har været i gang med over det seneste stykke tid; der har været heftig udvikling omkring elevrådet og 1. januar overgik alle landets gymnasier som bekendt til statsligt selveje.

Dagen i dag blev brugt på en lidt alternativ måde. Alle eleverne var ude i marken — min egen klasse var på Carlsberg — og derefter var der en reception, med så prominente talere som tidligere elev, Klaus Rifbjerg og journalist ved Dagbladet Information, Georg Metz. Disse snakkede meget om deres respektive skoletid og om hvordan de så KG’s fremtid.

Personligt har jeg et lidt ambivalent forhold til det. Jeg er enormt positiv over den udvikling skolen har været inde i, siden starten af indeværende skoleår, men jeg synes omvendt at navneskiftet til KG er lidt åndssvagt. Ikke fordi jeg ønsker at holde fast i et traditionsrigt navn, for det kunne jeg ikke være mere ligeglad med. Men fordi jeg synes det virker som et lidt letkøbt forsøg på at slippe væk fra de negative associationer mange har med navnet “Vestre Borgerdyd”. Og så fordi jeg synes navnet i sig selv er ret tamt. Dels virker det som en lidt for åbenlys kopi af Det Fri Gymnasium, dels lugter navnet generelt lidt for meget af en marketingsløsning. Jeg er bestemt tilhænger af fremskridt, men jeg synes ikke navnet havde behøvet blive ændret for dette.

Men fra i dag, torsdag d. 18. januar 2007, er jeg elev på Københavns åbne Gymnasium.