Re: [MLUG] guess what

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

>Baloney.  Java seems to be the new industry standard for whatever it 
>is your boss wants to do.  Python isn't.
>  
>
Java is the new industry standard because Sun made it a buzz word. Buzz 
words don't make a long lasting technology. It'll hang on as long as 
stuff is coded in it.. but it won't be so hot in a few years. C# has 
Microsoft behind it and it's going to destroy Java. The rest of the Java 
people will most likely be sucked in by Python.. just because anyone 
that doesn't want to go Microsoft is probably of the mindset of being 
more pro-opensource. Python doesn't have the PR department behind it 
that Java does so it's up take is slower. It's overall a better language 
though, and it's 100% free, so expect it to be around a long time. It'll 
never be the buzz word language that pointy head bosses ask for but 
it'll be the language in the background getting stuff done. Similar to 
Perl except that people switch from Perl to Python.. far fewer switch 
from Python to Perl.

>Interestingly, almost everything is these days.  Check out:
>
>http://www.swig.org/
>
>Especially check out the screenshots page.  SWIG is the bomb.  They
>used to have a testimonials page where I was anonymously quoted:
>
>   "I came.  I wrapped.  It ran.  Woo Hoo!"
>
>I guess they decided that this was not presenting the kind of 
>professional face they wanted to put forward.
>  
>
LOL. Swig is cool. I think Python is more emotionally friendly to SWIG 
than many other languages though. It's common to be told to do speed ups 
by rewritting parts of Python programs in C. I don't hear much of that 
in any other language circles.

>Michael, if you don't know what you're talking about, just go back
>to playing with your two notebooks.
>
Wow, that's kind of a mean tone to take. I've been coding most of my 
life. If there is one thing I do know about it's coding. No reason to be 
so defensive. Not as if I said you couldn't use Perl, C, or whatever 
your favorite language of the day is.

In a previous post you listed some problems with Python which were 
somewhat true and I didn't go snubbing my nose at you over it. A couple 
that come to mind that you mentioned.. some language stability issues. 
Mostly a thing of the past. Python is overall stable and has most of 
those past kinks worked out. This was a big thing for me because I hated 
Python in the past because it just had some bizzare issues that made 
coding a pain and made programs not work right. The other point I 
remember  you raising was whitespace. This one is sort of weird and 
definately throws most experienced programmers into "that's just wrong" 
mode but when you try it it really works quite well. I'm still not 
entirely sold that indention is better than braces but overall I think 
it's at least as good. The tabs vrs spaces issue is a bit irksome with 
the indention thing. Some coders insist on using spaces for indention to 
compensate for the number of editors that don't correctly support tabs. 
That rather irks me as tabs are easier to work with and I don't think a 
language should try to compensate for bad editors. Overall though it's 
only an issue if youu're working on a group project.. in which case you 
follow the project formatting guides as you'd do with any other language.

>Yes, there is some sucky Perl
>code out there, but if you think that the *sucky programmers* who
>wrote it would have written it so much better in Python, I think
>you're high.  The amount of crappy code written in a language is
>usually a function of the number of monkeys who are typing and how
>easy or hard it is to get anything to run.  Popular languages with a
>relativly low threshold for entry (and Perl qualifies here,
>interestingly) are by nature going to have more junky code written 
>in them.  There's also a lot of bad C code out there, but C has a 
>high enough barrier to entry so I'm guessing that there is less 
>dorky stuff out there.
>  
>
The problem isn't sucky programmers that write crappy code. The problem 
is good programmers that write good code that over time degrades into 
crap. Python forces a much cleaner syntax and thus degrades less than 
most other languages. You can still write crappy Python but good Python 
is easier to maintain.

The syntax is much less dense than Perl and the language takes an 
entirely different approach. Perl likes to say that there are many ways 
to do something. Python likes to say that there is only one way to 
something. So if you do something 10 times the code for it is going to 
look mostly the same all 10 times.. even if different people write that 
code on different days. From a maintenence point of view that is a huge 
help.

You can write good Perl code. You might even be able to maintain it. 
It'll just take a lot more effort. It's similar to the old argument 
between C and Assembly. Yes, you can write and maintain Assembly but 
it's a lot more effort than with C. I think it's pretty clear that for 
most things C has replaced Assembly. Did the change happen quickly? Hell no.

Python is clearer than C or Java because there is to deal with. You 
don't have any of the pointers and such of C nor the hassle with static 
types and such from Java. Of the various languages in real competition 
with Python I'd say Java is probably the closest to having maintainable 
code but then it does tend to require more work to produce Java programs 
and they tend to use more system resources..

Ruby is Perl for people that want to be a little more like Python. 
Javascript sucks. It's popular but it's a pain in the ass to write real 
programs in. I can't really say exactly why but Javascript just doesn't 
feel like a well designed language. PHP is okay but not well suited to 
general purpose use, has poor object support, and forces modules to be 
compiled in or manually linked in.

>The opposite is also supported by Perl modules.
>  
>
True, but why would you want to embed a language good for large 
structural programs into a language good for small parsing programs? You 
can embed Python into an HTML rendering engine for inline Python 
processing (mod_python actually allows something like this) but IMO that 
doesn't make any sense either.
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