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submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 77 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Partially unrelated to the meme, but I find it almost malicious how some python keywords are named differently from the nearly universal counterpart of other languagues.

This/self, continue/pass, catch/except and they couldn't find a different word for switch so they just didn't implement it.

It's as if the original designers purposefully wanted to be different for the sake of it.

[-] [email protected] 62 points 1 week ago

pass and continue are absolutely not equal (pass is a noop, and python has a continue keyword that does what you think), and switch is called match like in many other languages. except is weird though.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

"except" is also used in Pascal (or at least the main derivatives of it), but not sure if that's older than its use in Python or not.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

I read that self as a keyword also has quite a history. It was already used in Smalltalk, an OOP language from the early 80's.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Isn't self not actually a keyword? Like you can name the first variable in a class method anything and it will behave like self.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

You could use "this" instead of "self". And if you want a lynch mob of Python programmers outside your house, make a push request with that to some commonly used package.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

I think there will be a lynch mob of git users outside your house for calling PR as "push request".

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I've been wondering about the noise.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

only github users. git itself doesn't have PRs, and other forges call them different things. gitlab calls them merge requests, pico calls them patch requests...

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[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Python does have a switch statement now, actually. And yes, they went out of their way to call it something different - match.

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.html#match-statements

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

match isn't just equivalent to switch though, so in this case it actually makes sense to call it something different.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

This is very true. Match statements are much more powerful that switch statements in any other language.

For instance:

  • matching objects very specifically
  • if conditions within case statements
  • pulling variables from inside of the object directly.
[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

PHP naming "::" a Paamayim Nekudotayim is also pretty infamous.

When I'm designing shit, I'm pretty zealous about borrowing terminology from anything even vaguely related to avoid this.

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[-] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago

TBF the last two bullet points are verbose descriptions of the thing it means in C++, Java, and Python too. It's just that in JS, "this" can also be used in other places.

But yeah, in practice, every time I write JS I want to throw my hands in the air and shout "this is bullshit", but never know what "this" refers to... :D

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Yeah that's fair, though it also discusses that whole prototype thing that JS has going on

[-] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago

In Python, self is not a keyword, it’s a conventional variable name. You can replace all instances of “self” with “this” and your code will work the same.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Python is just distancing itself from JS.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Lua might have been a better choice, since self is special in lua.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Kinda.

Lua defines it implicitly only when you use the

function foo:bar(a, b, c) -- note the colon

syntactic sugar, which gets translated to

function foo.bar(self, a, b, c) -- note the period

In all cases, self is a regular variable name. You can even redeclare a new local with that name even when the old one is in scope.

Edit: some typos

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[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago

Sweet dreams are made of this

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

Rust: Borrow handler got mad at you for asking

(I'd assume)

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

It's either a reference to an object instance, or the instance itself (depending on whether you specified &mut self, &self or just self).

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Don't forget Self, the type of self.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Alternative image for C: Mr. Incredible: "A PARAMETER IS A PARAMETER!"

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

My JS:

Ah, you mean that?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

In Python you can use this as a variable name

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

In Python you can use 🍆 as a variable name.

Edit: oops, guess I was mistaken, you can use most Unicode but emojis are not valid.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Just going by the reputation, you probably can do this in JavaScript

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago
~ $ python
Python 3.12.10 (main, Apr  9 2025, 18:13:11) [Clang 18.0.3 (https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/llvm-project d8003a456 on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ❗ = 'nah'
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    ❗ = 'nah'
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid character '❗' (U+2757)
>>>
~ $ node
Welcome to Node.js v23.11.1.
Type ".help" for more information.
> const 👍 = 'test'
const 👍 = 'test'
      ^

Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token
>
[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Edit: oops, guess I was mistaken, you can use most Unicode but emojis are not valid.

That actually seems even more arbitrary. Like, do they just hate fun?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

you might be thinking of Rust.

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

You can use anything that doesn't start with a digit or punctuation as a variable name (underscore beginning also allowed) unless it's a keyword.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I was working on a C code base with classes, inheritance, and polymorphism, all done by hands and macros.

Something like

typedef struct s_some_class {
    void (*method)(this *s_some_class);
} t_some_class;

Overall, learning C was the best enabler in my whole career. For instance I was learning Python by tinkering with CPython VM, so when I see these ‘WAT’ quircks I know exactly what’s up.

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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
497 points (97.7% liked)

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