If you mean inserting a blank line, such as between code blocks or significant subsections of code, that won't break a Python program. It'll run just fine.
I accidentally made a misleading statement in that last post. Regarding Guido van Rossum's original design goals, here's a quote from a recent interview:
Actually, my initial goal for Python was to serve as a second language for people who were C or C++ programmers, but who had work where writing a C program was just not effective.
Because maybe it was something you'd do only once. It was the sort of thing you'd prefer to write a shell script for, but when you got into the writing details, you found that the shell was not the ideal language--you needed more data structures, more namespaces, or maybe more performance. The first sound bite I had for Python was, "Bridge the gap between the shell and C."
So I never intended Python to be the primary language for programmers, although it has become the primary language for many Python users. It was intended to be a second language for people who were already experienced programmers, as some of the early design choices reflect. On the other hand, intuitively I probably stuck to many of ABC's design principles. Because although I had my criticisms of ABC, I borrowed many of its valuable elements, which eventually made Python a great language for people who aren't ace programmers or who are just learning. We now have a large community of people using Python as an educational language, teaching Python in schools. These people aren't and may never be professional programmers, but they still find some programming skills useful.
Although there are still a lot of people I haven't met, even within the Python community, I really haven't gotten the impression that very many Python programmers have any grudge at all against Perl. There's a bit of a friendly rivalry, but the tone among serious Pythonistas has never struck me as venomous.
The two languages have plenty of similarities and differences. Both are powerful interpreted languages. And both have deep roots in various communities, with a certain amount of overlap.
The most legendary distinction between the two languages is philosophical. Perl's "There's more than one way to do it" is often contrasted with Python's "There should be one obvious way to do it". Playfully, some have said that Python is like "executable pseudocode" and Perl is like "executable line noise" (referring to the readability mythos).
According to Perl.org: "Perl started on Unix systems as a system administration tool." Python's origin is as a teaching language, one that can be easy to learn, promoting good coding habits. Of course the languages have taken different directions. They didn't even start off in the same way.
Before I found Python, Perl was the language with which I'd had the most success. I just happen to have had more personal joy with Python, although I keep a current Perl interpreter installed on most machines on which I work.
In my experience, Python people don't tend to be anti-Perl. We're just pro-Python.
Slashdot Mirror
But the whitespace-delimited languages really like you! ;)
If you mean inserting a blank line, such as between code blocks or significant subsections of code, that won't break a Python program. It'll run just fine.
Although there are still a lot of people I haven't met, even within the Python community, I really haven't gotten the impression that very many Python programmers have any grudge at all against Perl. There's a bit of a friendly rivalry, but the tone among serious Pythonistas has never struck me as venomous.
The two languages have plenty of similarities and differences. Both are powerful interpreted languages. And both have deep roots in various communities, with a certain amount of overlap.
The most legendary distinction between the two languages is philosophical. Perl's "There's more than one way to do it" is often contrasted with Python's "There should be one obvious way to do it". Playfully, some have said that Python is like "executable pseudocode" and Perl is like "executable line noise" (referring to the readability mythos).
According to Perl.org: "Perl started on Unix systems as a system administration tool." Python's origin is as a teaching language, one that can be easy to learn, promoting good coding habits. Of course the languages have taken different directions. They didn't even start off in the same way.
Before I found Python, Perl was the language with which I'd had the most success. I just happen to have had more personal joy with Python, although I keep a current Perl interpreter installed on most machines on which I work.
In my experience, Python people don't tend to be anti-Perl. We're just pro-Python.