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by mbreese 2532 days ago
It's not about experience vs inexperience... it's about code readability and being unsurprising.

    m = re.match(...)
    if m:
        ... do something ...
is verbose, but quite readable. Given that it's the way things have been done since forever, it's also unsurprising.

    if m := re.match(...):
        ... do something ...
Without knowing what the walrus operator is, it is not entirely clear what is going on here. := is only syntactic sugar, which is not what Python has ever been about.
2 comments
clinta 2532 days ago
Python already has " as " operator that I think is very readable.

  with open('file') as f:
      ... do something ...
I don't know why that didn't come out on top in the debate.

  if re.match(...) as m:
      ... do something ...
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owaislone 2532 days ago
If feel Go solves this in a much more readable way.

    if m := re.match(...); m {
        ... do something ...
    }
Still not as readable as splitting it over multiple lines but quite a lot better than Python's syntax IMO especially once you learn how the if statement works in Go.
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mkl 2532 days ago
How is that more readable? It's identical except for ":" -> ";", and some extra symbols added. Needing to repeat "m" seems seems redundant, and particularly bad for readability as it moves the actual condition far away from the "if".
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owaislone 2530 days ago
It is better IMO because it doesn't merge two things into one. It simply translates to `if <assignment>; <condition> { <body> }` as a generic rule. Variable used in condition may or may not be the same one in assignment. Bundling assignment and condition is what people don't like about this feature.
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