Re: [MLUG] guess what

[Jason McIntosh <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

As a note, Java may be a bit trickier to code for in an enterprise 
situation, but it's also one hell of a lot better in an enterprise 
situation when you consider all that it can do.  Look at the concept of 
Application Servers, which run Java in memory, VERY optimized, allow 
caching, clustering solutions, machine independence, multi-layered and 
business logic independence in a relatively easily implemented manner, 
and MANY other features, and you're bashing Java without really 
understanding where Java comes in.
Java is an AWESOME enterprise system.  .NET is one of the few things 
currently available which can compete with it, feature and ease of use 
wise.  Which is of course why .NET was created and is becoming as 
popular as it is.
I'm not saying Python is a bad language, but I AM saying Java is a good 
language, and bashing it as "buzz word" or whatever means you really 
don't understand the technology and features set behind it.  I've been 
doing C programming and Java programming for quite a while.  For a lot 
of things, Java just blows other languages away.
Jason

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On Apr 1, 2004, at 1:11 PM, Michael wrote:

>
>> 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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