On Wed, Jun 27, 2001 at 04:52:52PM -0600, Anthony Chavez wrote:
> Mark:
> 
> You're a Python hacker, no?

I dunno if I'm a "hacker", I've done a little bit with Python, but not a whole
lot, enough to be conversant.

> What can you say about it?

I like it. Well designed, syntactically clean, good OO model.

> I have seen it touted as "better than Perl,"

That's a frequent comparison. I think the reason the two are fequently
compared (with some love lost on both sides of the debate) is because they're
prolly the top two "scripting" languages on *nix platforms (ignoring
Bourne-shell and compliant derivatives). Perl and Python also have a fair
amount of crossover, functionality-wise, which makes them both valid choices
for a certain domain of problems. I'm one of those people who can appreciate
different things for different reasons, so I like both Perl and Python (but
for different reasons).

I would actually compare Python more closely to Java. Here's a brief snippet
from History in the World Of Mark:

 - In the beginning, I learned Pascal and I thought: "This is nice"

 - Next, I learned C and I said "this is better"

 - Shortly thereafter, I learned C++ and I said "this really brings C to
   another level!"

 - After 5 years of coding in C++, I discovered all the "quirks" and foibles
   that make up C++ and learned the true horror of the language. I vowed,
   henceforth, to use it as little as possible.

 - I then learned Java and declared: "This is what C++ always should have
   been"

 - I then learned the problems with Java. Some of said problems were
   technical, but most of them were due to Java being owned and controlled by
   a big mega-corporation, screwing up a nice piece of technology in the way
   mega-corporations are wont to do.

 - Shortly thereafter I heard about Python. For many moons I put off learning
   more about it, not for any technical reason, but because I was so annoyed
   with the piss-poor Python "advocacy" that I saw on discussion groups. I was
   particularly put off by the animosity shown toward Perl, a language that I
   liked (and still like). Advocates can be their own worst enemies betimes.
   (OS/2 & Mac advocates have done themselves a lot of harm, IMO.)

 - Eventually, I overcame my annoyance and was determined to evaluate Python
   on its own merits, and not on the character of its advocates. After looking
   at it for awhile I said: "This is what Java always should have been";
   BSD-type license, supported / developed by a large net-linked community of
   programmers and users. Nice.

The above historical excerpt is far from complete; I learned many other
languages and such along the way, but this is the path that led me to Python.

> but from what I've read so far it doesn't even have regexps---or did I miss
> something?

You missed something. Regular expressions are not a built-in feature of Python
as they are in Perl (which is something I really like about Perl, BTW), but
are provided via a module called 're'. Documentation link here:

	http://python.org/doc/current/lib/module-re.html

There is even a Perl-compliant regular expression module called 'perlre'.
(Handy)

> Please be as verbose as possible.  /me hands you a soapbox. :-)

Gracias for the soapbox. ;-) Other than what I've said above, there's a few
more high points I'll bring up:

 - Small Core: Python seems to have followed the good example of C by having a
   relatively small "core" of language features and providing more features
   via libraries. This makes it possible to hold all of the important stuff in
   your head.

 - Syntactic Clarity: Mentioned before, but worth repeating. Python seems to
   have a lot less "line noise" than many (dare I say "most") other languages.
   Careful attention was paid to keeping things clean.

 - OO is Built-In / Ignorable: Some languages have had OO features "bolted on"
   to them after the fact, C++ and Perl are two examples. OO stuff was built
   into Python from the get-go (much like Java). The nice thing though, is
   that if you want to just do normal procedural programming, you can; the OO
   stuff doesn't get in your way.  (Considerate of them to have designed it
   that way.)

 - Nice Functional Language Features: I have a bit of a functional language
   bone in my body so it's nice to see functions like 'lambda', 'reduce', and
   'filter' built into the language and a native list type.

 - Whitespace As A Block Delimiter: This is the first thing most newcomers to
   Python see and it usually illicits a viceral, nauseous response. Such was
   my first response as well but I've come around: getting rid of brackets
   means you don't have a zillion different bracket-placement coding styles;
   having a whitespace be part of the coding structure means you can read
   anybody else's code because there's very few ways for them to obfuscate
   their code.


There are a lot of nice features of Python and they seem to have taken some
steps to reduce a lot of common problems and promote clean coding style. That
having been said, it is still possible to write ugly Python code. (Take a look
at the code to "mailman" some day. Nice Mailing-List daemon, really ugly code,
all written in Python.)

Bottom Line: Give it a shot, I think you'll like it. A good place to start is
the Python website:

	http://www.python.org


Cheers,


Mark Whitley
mark.k.whitley@gmail.com