| `highlight = reverse` also flies in the face of TOOWTDI (from PEP 20). Which is a shame, because this means that convenience methods that Ruby has, e.g. ary.first → ary[0], ary.compact → ary.reject{|x| x.nil? }, ary.map → ary.collect are pruned out of the stdlib and frowned on in contributed libraries. This chilling effect that descends from PEP20 is one of the worse aspects of Python. They increase readability and should be encouraged. Even if ary.last is one more character, it uses less of my brain to read than ary[-1]. ary.map might be more readable if other code uses ary.reduce, while ary.collect is more readable if other code uses ary.inject, ary.detect, etc. The OP gave a perfect example with this---in an event handler for a drag operation within an editor, I'd rather communicate that text is being .highlight()-ed, even if the underlying view methods are reversing the pixels. If I used .reverse(), it might confuse a coder into thinking the text itself is being reversed when I drag. Perhaps if more Pythonistas consider this a "best practice," it will swing favor for amending the Zen. But I wouldn't bet on it. Also, you're incorrect about help(). help(Foo.highlight) will provide the docstring for Foo.reverse if Foo.highlight = Foo.reverse. |
This has nothing to do with whether it's a good idea. If you read a lot of python code, the latter is easier to grok. And when you have separate ways of doing things, it takes a longer and longer time to absorb those idioms and internalize them to the point where you don't need to think. Adding a bunch of "convenience" methods that do minor permutations on common operations might read better when a line of code is given as an isolated example, because it can read more like an english sentence. But when you're reading over code, the resemblance to english only helps when you're looking at application code which isn't a part of the language or standard library. Having the language and standard library present a single way to do things makes it easier to get to a base level of familiarity.
Endless variety in doing simple things doesn't buy you much.
That being said, the python stdlib is full of stuff built up over many years, so it doesn't follow that idea everywhere. Also, higher level design is never going to fit into the TOOWTDI concept because things at that level are more subjective.