Searching for the best scripting language,

[Richard James]

Are we looking at the scripting world through Python colored glasses?
Has Python development been sleeping while the world of scripting
languages has passed us Pythonista's by?

On Saturday Slashdot ran this article on the "best" scripting
languages.

http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/04/06/12/2125229.shtml?tid=126&tid=156

"Folks at the Scriptometer conducted a practical survey of which
scripting language is the best. While question like that is bound to
generate flamewars between the usual Perl vs PHP, Python vs Perl,
VBScript vs everything crowds, the Scriptometer survey is practical:
if I have to write a script, I have to write it fast, it has to be
small (less typing), it should allow me to either debug itself via a
debugger or just verbose output mode. sh, Perl and Ruby won the
competition, and with the difference of 1-2 points they were
essentially tied for first place... Interesting that ICFP contests
lately pronounced OCaml as the winner for rapid development."

Scriptometer site:

http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/scripting-language/

Needless to say, the Ruby site was Slashdot-ed today.

What points are the Scriptometer survey missing, in regards to the
ease of use and beauty of the Python language?

Or should I convert my code base to Ruby and or OCaml? :)

Let the rabid "in defense of Python" flames begin!

-- R.J.

[Markus Zywitza]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Hi everybody

Richard James wrote:
[color=blue]
> What points are the Scriptometer survey missing, in regards to the
> ease of use and beauty of the Python language?[/color]

Well, better look again at Guido's Tutorial, as it reads at the very
beginning:

"""
If you ever wrote a large shell script, you probably know this feeling:
you'd love to add yet another feature, but it's already so slow, and so
big, and so complicated; or the feature involves a system call or other
function that is only accessible from C
"""

The page misses completely the handling of more complex tasks than those
typically used in any shell (hey, those examples could even be realized
with a DOS batch file :-p). Python might not be the number one choice
for testing whether a file is readable, but ask them why Fedora has
chosen Python for their Anaconda OS Installer and not a shell script...

-Markus

[Edward Diener]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Richard James wrote:[color=blue]
> Are we looking at the scripting world through Python colored glasses?
> Has Python development been sleeping while the world of scripting
> languages has passed us Pythonista's by?
>
> On Saturday Slashdot ran this article on the "best" scripting
> languages.
>[/color]
http://developers.slashdot.org/devel...id=126&tid=156[color=blue]
>
> "Folks at the Scriptometer conducted a practical survey of which
> scripting language is the best.[/color]

"Practical surveys" are always as hilarious as practical programming, unless
one is asleep to their implications. One of the simple ones, which no doubt
formed much of the basis of this survey, always is: in which situation do I
have to type the least number of characters. For the brainless, this is a
valid test of programming excellence. Hopefully not all programmers in the
world have been reduced to such brainlessness yet.

[Ryan Paul]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:34:43 -0700, Richard James wrote:[color=blue]
> "Folks at the Scriptometer conducted a practical survey of which
> scripting language is the best. While question like that is bound to
> generate flamewars between the usual Perl vs PHP, Python vs Perl,
> VBScript vs everything crowds, the Scriptometer survey is practical:
> if I have to write a script, I have to write it fast, it has to be
> small (less typing), it should allow me to either debug itself via a
> debugger or just verbose output mode. sh, Perl and Ruby won the
> competition, and with the difference of 1-2 points they were
> essentially tied for first place... Interesting that ICFP contests
> lately pronounced OCaml as the winner for rapid development."
>[/color]
[color=blue]
> What points are the Scriptometer survey missing, in regards to the
> ease of use and beauty of the Python language?
>
> Or should I convert my code base to Ruby and or OCaml? :)[/color]


I recently learned ruby, merely out of curiosity. Now that I know it, I
dont write ANY shell utilities with python anymore. Ruby is a much better
choice for almost all simple administrative tasks. For larger programs,
there are times when python seems like a better choice. Python enforces
consistency and readability. In an environment where many people will be
working on the same code for an extended period of time, the benefits of
python become apparent. That isnt to say that ruby *cant* be used in
situations like that. If ruby programmers layout strict guidelines for a
project regarding style and methodology, it would be just as effective.

The proof is in the source. This is part of a ruby program I wrote. This
snippet is actually a single 'line'. I broke it into several lines for
slightly improved readability. This single line would probably take at
least 15 lines to do in python, probably more if you wanted to do it
intelligently.

["*.rar.*", "*.r[0-9][0-9].*"].each {|fn|
Dir[$prefix+fn].collect {|x|
x.gsub(/\.\d+[\d.-]*$/,"")}.uniq.e ach {|x|
`cat #{sesc x}.* > #{sesc x}`} }

One of my other favorite features of ruby, is the ability to globally add
methods to base types. While I strongly feel that the ability to extend
base types is a powerful feature, I'm sure many python programmers would
disagree.
[color=blue]
> Or should I convert my code base to Ruby and or OCaml? :)[/color]

Ruby and Python really have a lot in common. The one you use should
ultimately be based on your style and how you feel about programming. If
you like lots of mutability, lots of functional idioms, and inline regular
expressions, switch to ruby! If not, stick with python.

I'm an ardent OCaml advocate. Anyone who uses c++ should have their head
examined. OCaml is a fast, statically typed, object oriented language with
type inference, pattern matching, automatic memory management, and
inherent parametric polymorphism (you dont need templates!). Native
compilers AND dynamic interpreters are available. It even comes with an
interactive top-level like python does. OCaml programs typically run
faster than comparable c++ programs, and they take significantly less time
to write. OCaml has a built-in list type, and it comes with all the usual
list manipulation functions (map and filter). OCaml is somewhat difficult
to learn however. If you have the intellectual capacity and the time
required to learn a challenging language, learn OCaml. Additionally, I
should mention that OCaml libraries can easily be integrated with python
programs via pycaml. I use OCaml instead of C to write python extensions.

--SegPhault

[David Eppstein]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

In article <2c60f0e0.04061 31234.49b485ec@ posting.google. com>,
rmb25612@yahoo. com (Richard James) wrote:
[color=blue]
> Scriptometer site:
> http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/la...ting-language/
>
> Needless to say, the Ruby site was Slashdot-ed today.[/color]

Scriptometer seems heavily biased towards conciseness of code.
Needless to say, that's not why we use and love Python...

--
David Eppstein http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science

[Lothar Scholz]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

rmb25612@yahoo. com (Richard James) wrote in message news:<2c60f0e0. 0406131234.49b4 85ec@posting.go ogle.com>...
[color=blue]
> Needless to say, the Ruby site was Slashdot-ed today.[/color]

This has nothing to do with ./
The site was hacked and corrupted two weeks ago and since this time
one a stub is online.

[Lothar Scholz]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Ryan Paul <segphault@sbcg lobal.net> wrote in message news:<pan.2004. 06.14.00.20.41. 295709@sbcgloba l.net>...
[color=blue]
> Ruby and Python really have a lot in common. The one you use should
> ultimately be based on your style and how you feel about programming. If
> you like lots of mutability, lots of functional idioms, and inline regular
> expressions, switch to ruby! If not, stick with python.[/color]

Or if you need real multithreading and WxPython. This are IMHO the
reasons not to switch to ruby. The python implementation is
technically much better. And the python libraries are still much
better then ruby.

As the person behind "http://www.python-ide.com" and
"http://www.ruby-ide.com" i can tell you that otherwise the language
are almost the same. For example from the 18000 lines of code for the
debugger about 2000 lines are different for this two languages.

But look yourself. A weekend should be enough for a python programmer
to learn ruby.

[Carl Banks]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Richard James wrote:[color=blue]
> What points are the Scriptometer survey missing, in regards to the
> ease of use and beauty of the Python language?[/color]

Everything. It's definitely one of the most useless side-by-side
comparisons I've ever seen.

The program lengths criterion is ridiculous. It rewards Perl for
using unreadable line noise.

(Since when does Perl have an interactive interpretter?)


--
CARL BANKS http://www.aerojockey.com/software
"If you believe in yourself, drink your school, stay on drugs, and
don't do milk, you can get work."
-- Parody of Mr. T from a Robert Smigel Cartoon

[Graham Breed]

pycaml (was: Searching for the best scripting language,

Ryan Paul wrote:
....[color=blue]
> required to learn a challenging language, learn OCaml. Additionally, I
> should mention that OCaml libraries can easily be integrated with python
> programs via pycaml. I use OCaml instead of C to write python extensions.[/color]

do you have examples? i could only get it to work the other way round.


graham

[Max M]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Richard James wrote:
[color=blue]
> Are we looking at the scripting world through Python colored glasses?
> Has Python development been sleeping while the world of scripting
> languages has passed us Pythonista's by?[/color]

Everyone knows that any scripting language shootout that doesn't show
Python as the best language is faulty by design.

regards Max M

[Eric S. Johansson]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Richard James wrote:[color=blue]
> Let the rabid "in defense of Python" flames begin![/color]

I will defend python from a different perspective namely that of handicapped usability. Python doesn't contain a whole lot of "modem line noise" characters and with the help of python mode in emacs, does a lot of the indentation properly. So all in all, it minimizes hand use which minimizes physical pain.
I suspect that a blind user would also have greater ease using and working with python for the same reason. modem line noise characters and, funny spelling mixed case are the three biggest impediments to usability by handicapped people.

I would love to have an IDE (to tie into another thread) which would work well with speech recognition. There is already a project (voice coder) which has built a lot of the infrastructure necessary to do so but it (in my opinion) is hampered by the one-way nature of that integration. I believe for handicapped accessibility to programming environments to be truly useful there needs to be a two-way integration where the IDE reveals information about the application so that appropriate grammars and symbols will be revealed and made speakable.

---eric

[Cameron Laird]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

In article <9hdzc.93679$DG 4.801@fe2.colum bus.rr.com>,
Carl Banks <imbosol@aerojo ckey.invalid> wrote:

[Peter Hansen]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Ryan Paul wrote:
[color=blue]
> The proof is in the source. This is part of a ruby program I wrote. This
> snippet is actually a single 'line'. I broke it into several lines for
> slightly improved readability. This single line would probably take at
> least 15 lines to do in python, probably more if you wanted to do it
> intelligently.
>
> ["*.rar.*", "*.r[0-9][0-9].*"].each {|fn|
> Dir[$prefix+fn].collect {|x|
> x.gsub(/\.\d+[\d.-]*$/,"")}.uniq.e ach {|x|
> `cat #{sesc x}.* > #{sesc x}`} }[/color]

This is proof of something, I'm sure, but for me it's simply another
indication that (a) Ruby is more like Perl than it is like Python,
(b) unreadable code can be written in any language, and (c) I
really don't mind using 15 lines to write something if it means
the resulting code can readily be understood.

Thanks for reinforcing my lack of interest in switching to Ruby. :-)

-Peter

[Peter Hickman]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Peter Hansen wrote:
Please don't take that code snippet as an example of Ruby but more as evidence
of a bad programmer, as you said "unreadable code can be written in any
language" and Paul Ryan has just proved it.

Take it this way, if someone showed you some badly written Python would that put
you off Python?

[Peter Hansen]

Re: Searching for the best scripting language,

Peter Hickman wrote:
[color=blue]
> Take it this way, if someone showed you some badly written Python would
> that put you off Python?[/color]

I'm waiting to see anyone succeed at writing Python code that badly.
I'd argue that it's not possible, unless one is deliberately trying
to make Python look bad.

(Note: I'm not saying people don't write really poor Python code,
or even code that looks awful. I am saying that I don't think
even the worst that I've seen would actually have made me say
"Ugh, Python must suck!" as a result, if I didn't already know
what Python was really like.)

-Peter