A moment of silence to all the python devs that don't get the ++ and -- reference

"Shouldn't that be +=1?"

Not to be an A hole but I don't think anybody has learnt a programming language so abstracted that they don't understand the ++ and - - reference.

@varundey It's just a joke

But Python doesn't actually support ++, it uses +=1 instead so someone who only recently started programming with python might not understand

@Memeamphetamine I know. I'm a python dev. I had this sudden urge of pointing it out right after I read your rant. Peace :)

@varundey I'm a python dev myself haha

I'm a ruby dev - I also feel this pain

@mattrayner Welcome to devRant! I'm also quite new here

@Memeamphetamine thanks :-)

😂😂😂

Swift developers too, apparently.

@divil it's an expression with side effect. It shouldn't be actively encouraged by the language

Agree++

@ajfaura I'm glad you incremented this agreement

@elazar true, but those who know how to use it well (and understand the difference between var++ and ++var) can write some nifty expressions 😉

I'm not a Python dev so someone tell me – can (var += 1) be used as an expression which evaluates to the new value of var?

@garrettw Yes, hence the first comment

@Memeamphetamine I meant as opposed to merely an assignment statement

@garrettw I'm not sure what you mean then

@Memeamphetamine ok let me try to explain.

var = 2
var += 1
---- so all this does is set var to 3. Simple assignment statements.

var = 1
if ((var += 1) == 2) {
echo 'success'
}
---- this sets var to 1, then adds 1 to it, and compares the result with 2. They are equal, so the text is printed. This is what I meant by working as an expression.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a good way to code, but it is a way.

@garrettw In Python, assignment is a statement not an expression. "If" requires an expression to evaluate, so this:

if ((var += 1) == 2):

throws an invalid syntax error.

What really is handy about the augmented assignments is that the target is only evaluated once and, when possible, it is updated in place. In a = a + b, a gets evaluated twice. Also a new object is created and assigned to the new a. In a+=b, a gets evaluated only once, and for mutable types it's updated in place without creating a new object.

Since integers are immutable, for something like var+=1 then it's mostly a convenient shorthand.

@jallman112 thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for - and more 🙂

Those crazy brainfuck devs wondering why it doesn't go up by two.