Is there no end to Python?

[Peter Hansen]

Re: Is there no end to Python?

Scott David Daniels wrote:[color=blue]
> Kind of like the core developers saying, rather than getting more
> users of this language, I'd prefer they submit careful bug reports
> with money attached to fix the bugs -- ain't gonna happen.[/color]

Actually, it does happen: http://www.python.org/psf/donations/

(The actual list doesn't appear to have survived the transition to the
new site, but there really are people who have donated, and sometimes
simply in the hopes it helps get a problem fix, or out of gratitude that
a bug was fixed. And for about N-1 other reasons (where N is how many
people have donated so far)...)

-Peter

[Terry Reedy]

Re: Is there no end to Python?


"Kamilche" <klachemin@comc ast.net> wrote in message
news:1142705943 .457304.109960@ e56g2000cwe.goo glegroups.com.. .[color=blue]
> arcane code' crowd. Sets - when I played with them, they were slower
> than doing the equivalent code with dicts. It's got to be a reliable,
> compelling feature, before I'll add it to my arsenal.[/color]

In 2.3, sets was, I believe, a module written in Python on top of the dict
type. In 2.4, set() is a builtin type written in C adapting the C code of
dicts but without the overhead of values, and with set rather than dict
oriented methods.

tjr

[Terry Reedy]

Re: Is there no end to Python?


"Jeffrey Schwab" <jeff@schwabcen ter.com> wrote in message
news:cEVSf.3987 7$915.30046@sou theast.rr.com.. .[color=blue]
> Sorry, that came out a lot ruder than I meant it.[/color]

There has been much worse here, and even more in other groups...
[color=blue]
> I've always heard that Python was extremely easy to learn. I'm still
> fairly new to the language, though (2.2), and I have not found it any
> easier to learn than Perl or Ruby. It's great that all these new
> features have been added, but if I want power at the expense of
> intuitive language constructs, I'll stick to C++.[/color]

Guido is not completely oblivious to complexificatio n versus ease of
learning. The problem at present is that 2.5 will have most of the
additions that have been planned for 3.0 but, for back-compatibility, few
of the deletions and simplifications .
tjr

[Magnus Lycka]

Re: Is there no end to Python?

John Salerno wrote:[color=blue]
> But isn't Python sort of known for the opposite, i.e. 'one simple way',
> or something to that effect?[/color]

If we compare it with the "opposite" language--Perl, and think
of these languages as natural languages, rather than programming
languages, Perl's inventor Larry Wall, felt that having a lot of
synonymns and allowing a lot of flexibility in word order etc,
would make it easier to express one's ideas well.

Python's inventor Guido van Rossum took a different approach. With
fewer synonyms and a less redundant grammer, it will be easier to
master the language, and certainly easier to read texts written by
others.

I don't know, but I suspect that the difference in approach is
rooted in Guido's understanding that we typically spend much more
time reading source code than we spend writing source code.

As it turns out, having fewer synonyms and grammatic variants, does
not make it harder to come up with different solutions to problems.
It rather seems that the lack of complexity that a simpler grammer
leads to makes it much easier to try out different solutions.