Why learn Python ??

[John J. Lee]

Re: Why learn Python ??

jjl@pobox.com (John J. Lee) writes:
[color=blue]
> "David M. Cook" <davecook@nowhe re.net> writes:
>[color=green]
> > In article <40029dad$0$287 06$a729d347@new s.telepac.pt>, Bicho Verde wrote:[/color]
> [...][color=green]
> > You could casually pick up enough Python to be useful in a week or so of
> > evenings.
> >
> > Perl is not much harder,[/color]
>
> It *seems* so when you first learn it...
>[color=green]
> > but has a lot of "gotchas".[/color]
>
> ... and they never end! Ilya Zakharevich (a "Perl God"):[/color]
[...]

Can't resist another bit of Perl-bashing: I just noticed this bit of
the FSF's license page. There's an amusing (and not accidental, I
think) parallel between the language and its license:

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html

The (Original) Artistic License.
We cannot say that this is a free software license because it is
too vague; some passages are too clever for their own good, and
their meaning is not clear. We urge you to avoid using
it,[snip...]


John

[JanC]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

claird@lairds.c om (Cameron Laird) schreef:
[color=blue][color=green]
>>Not sure what the goals were, but I'm not sure they were to compete
>>with Netscape and IE. CNRI funding -- "R" for research -- seems to[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Certainly not the *original* goal, because Grail antedated those
> latecomers.[/color]

My copy of Netscape 0.94beta for Windows has a file date of 1994-11-22.

And from the Grail docs:
"Grail was started in August 1995 as a quick and dirty demo. It quickly
became a serious project, as witnessed by the release of version 0.2 in
November 1995, and again by the planned release of version 0.3 (currently
in beta) in June 1996."

--
JanC

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

[Christos TZOTZIOY Georgiou]

Re: Why learn Python ??

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:21:00 +0100, rumours say that Bruno Desthuilliers
<bdesth.tagada@ tsoin-tsoin.free.fr> might have written:
[color=blue]
><troll>
>Woops ! The problem with Perl is actually that it's more or less a
>write-only language !-)
></troll>[/color]

I think you mean Perl is a WORN language (Write Once, Read Never).
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best,
Ils sont fous ces Redmontains! --Harddix

[Michael Hudson]

Re: Why learn Python ??

Christos "TZOTZIOY" Georgiou <tzot@sil-tec.gr> writes:
[color=blue]
> On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:21:00 +0100, rumours say that Bruno Desthuilliers
> <bdesth.tagada@ tsoin-tsoin.free.fr> might have written:
>[color=green]
> ><troll>
> >Woops ! The problem with Perl is actually that it's more or less a
> >write-only language !-)
> ></troll>[/color]
>
> I think you mean Perl is a WORN language (Write Once, Read Never).[/color]

WORA (Write Once, Run Away)?

Cheers,
mwh

--
Worryingly, DEFUN appears to be a function that removes all the
fun from something: after using it all your code is converted
to C++. -- Tim Bradshaw, comp.lang.lisp

[Michael Hudson]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

jjl@pobox.com (John J. Lee) writes:
[color=blue]
> Not sure what the goals were, but I'm not sure they were to compete
> with Netscape and IE. CNRI funding -- "R" for research -- seems to
> imply I do remember correctly (one of us should really check the
> facts here... oh well, it's USENET ;-).[/color]

I thought the purpose of grail was a test bed for research into mobile
agents, that being what most of the PythonLabs flok were working on at
CNRI. I'm probably no better informed than the rest of this thread,
though :-)

Cheers,
mwh

--
Our Constitution never promised us a good or efficient government,
just a representative one. And that's what we got.
-- http://www.advogato.org/person/mrorg...html?start=109

[Cameron Laird]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

In article <Xns94711F202CE D8JanC@213.119. 4.35>,
JanC <usenet@janc.cj b.net> wrote:[color=blue]
>claird@lairds. com (Cameron Laird) schreef:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>Not sure what the goals were, but I'm not sure they were to compete
>>>with Netscape and IE. CNRI funding -- "R" for research -- seems to[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
>> Certainly not the *original* goal, because Grail antedated those
>> latecomers.[/color]
>
>My copy of Netscape 0.94beta for Windows has a file date of 1994-11-22.
>
>And from the Grail docs:
>"Grail was started in August 1995 as a quick and dirty demo. It quickly
>became a serious project, as witnessed by the release of version 0.2 in
>November 1995, and again by the planned release of version 0.3 (currently
>in beta) in June 1996."[/color]

[JanC]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

claird@lairds.c om (Cameron Laird) schreef:
[color=blue]
> In article <Xns94711F202CE D8JanC@213.119. 4.35>,
> JanC <usenet@janc.cj b.net> wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>>My copy of Netscape 0.94beta for Windows has a file date of 1994-11-22.
>>
>>And from the Grail docs:
>>"Grail was started in August 1995 as a quick and dirty demo. It quickly
>>became a serious project, as witnessed by the release of version 0.2 in
>>November 1995, and again by the planned release of version 0.3 (currently
>>in beta) in June 1996."[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Yikes! Good research--and I'm always in favor of that.
> I apologize for my error. It's certainly disquieting;
> I had such a strong memory that Grail was around in
> mid-'94 that I didn't verify the facts. What *was* I
> thinking about?[/color]

Well, I didn't know Grail was that old, so I went searching.

But Netscape was largely based on Mosaic anyway; being developed by the
same developers. The beta I was talking about above still has a Mosaic
logo. ;-)

--
JanC

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

[Andrew Dalke]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

JanC:[color=blue]
> But Netscape was largely based on Mosaic anyway; being developed by the
> same developers. The beta I was talking about above still has a Mosaic
> logo. ;-)[/color]

While it had many of the same developers, as I recall, none of the code was
shared. They were planning to call it Netscape Mosaic but that was
changed before the final release. Also, and again pulling out some old
memory here, Netscape paid UIUC a chunk of money just in case there
was some accidental copyright transfer because of not doing a pure
clean-room reimplementatio n. I think that was mentioned in the IPO
prospectus... but I'm not going to try and dig it up now.

Andrew
dalke@dalkescie ntific.com

[Paul Boddie]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

"Andrew Dalke" <adalke@mindspr ing.com> wrote in message news:<ALMNb.117 00$1e.231@newsr ead2.news.pas.e arthlink.net>.. .[color=blue]
> JanC:[color=green]
> > But Netscape was largely based on Mosaic anyway; being developed by the
> > same developers. The beta I was talking about above still has a Mosaic
> > logo. ;-)[/color]
>
> While it had many of the same developers, as I recall, none of the code was
> shared. They were planning to call it Netscape Mosaic but that was
> changed before the final release.[/color]

It was actually called Mosaic Netscape for a time since the company
was originally called Mosaic Communications Corporation. Visit
http://www.mcom.com and see where it takes you! (Completely work safe,
I might add.) Now that's what I call long term domain name asset
management!

There seemed to be some fairly major differences between later
releases of Mosaic before NCSA pulled it (after licensing it to
various corporations) and Netscape Navigator - Navigator was threaded
even on Windows 3.1, and was clearly better supported on UNIX, Windows
and Mac. Still, it's amusing to consider Netscape 4.x and earlier as
having some common heritage with Internet Explorer.

As for Grail, it was certainly a "hot product" in the Python community
in 1995 because of the restricted execution environment which I
evaluated for a project involving mobile software agents. How
priorities and trends have changed since then! Who would have thought
that Microsoft Outlook would be the premier platform for mobile code?
;-)

Paul

[beliavsky@aol.com]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

grahamd@dscpl.c om.au (Graham Dumpleton) wrote in message
[color=blue]
> Would agree that more often than not it is the programmers working
> on the project. I have met very very few programmers who I thought
> had what it takes to develop decent C++ code which is understandable
> and maintainable. Part of the problem though is not the programmers
> but the C++ libraries they have to work with. Even though the
> STL may be the "standard template library", it is pretty dangerous stuff.
> Your average programmer however will tell you it is wonderful stuff
> and never understand its danger and how one can so easily create
> huge disasters with it.[/color]

<SNIP>

What is so dangerous about the STL in C++?

[Rainer Deyke]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing (was: Why learn Python ??)

beliavsky@aol.c om wrote:[color=blue]
> What is so dangerous about the STL in C++?[/color]

One thing is that iterators can get invalidated when the container is
modified.


--
Rainer Deyke - rainerd@eldwood .com - http://eldwood.com

[Aaron Watters]

C# vs (stackless) python Re: Why learn Python ??

jjl@pobox.com (John J. Lee) wrote in message news:<877jzwg1v 2.fsf@pobox.com >...[color=blue]
> "Bicho Verde" <bichoverde@sap o.pt> writes:
> C#: Java for MS .NET users (to first order, anyway). .NET has broader
> goals than Java for language interoperation, so even though Jim Hugunin
> and others have done some initial work on a .NET implementation of
> Python, dynamic languages like Python will likely never be full .NET
> citizens (thanks to the design of the .NET CLR). If that full
> citizenship is important to you, C# has that advantage, but I'm
> reliably informed it's fairly well-described as "a Java clone"
> (implying programmer-inefficiency), so I'd be inclined to look for a
> better language with a good .NET implementation. Lisp? Smalltalk?
> (there was talk of an excellent .NET smalltalk implementation, but I'm
> not sure whether that was vapourware or not...)[/color]

C# also fixes a lot of stupidities in java: for example a method can
"return" more than one new value and there is a syntax for first class-ish
callback methods (delegates) among the more prominent improvements.
Also C# is far friendlier to "legacy" code (than java was originally
intended to be).

From a pure code beauty point of view (or point of me/us :) ) Python
is still easier to read thanks to things like slicing,
list/dictionary displays, and keyword arguments
but type safety is a really big win for larger projects, and of course
C# is much faster.

And once you get some feeling for the namespace
hierarchy and the development environment I think it is a fairly
productive work environment. Maybe more productive than python?
There are some easily fixable problems/irritations --
like the way IO uses preallocated buffers in C++ style, which is
irritating but easy to wrap away. To my taste I'd definitely prefer
C# over lisp or smalltalk.

There is the portability thing, of course. And python is free...

OTOH *stackless* python has some *really* compelling advantages over C#
-- like the ability to feasibly manage thousands of microthreads,
which I wouldn't advise in C#, java, or "normal" python....

-- Aaron Watters
===
WIND THE FROG!

[Mirko Zeibig]

Re: C++ bad-mouthing

Rainer Deyke said the following on 01/16/2004 07:23 PM:[color=blue]
> beliavsky@aol.c om wrote:
>[color=green]
>>What is so dangerous about the STL in C++?[/color]
>
>
> One thing is that iterators can get invalidated when the container is
> modified.[/color]

Hm, I think there are similar problems in Python:
--- snip ---
adict = {'foo': 'bar', 'spam': 'ham'}

for key in adict: # has to be adict.keys()
del adict[key]
--- snap ---

This snippet leads to a RuntimeError but the first item will be gone.

Of course, you may use the "older" syntax in this case. ".keys()" will
generate the list of keys once in advance, while the upper example will
call next() each time AFAIK.

Regards
Mirko
--