Re: COAS white paper draft
>>>>> On 29 Oct 1997 19:37:00 +0200, kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) said:
Kai> bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens) wrote on 29.10.97 in
Kai> <[🔎] m0xQTJZ-00IdTUC@golem.pixar.com>:
>> Someone there asked about Perl, and the answer was that they
>> considered Python to be a more maintainable alternative. I must
>> admit to sharing their feelings on perl.
Kai> <mode=language-holy-war> AFAIK Python is a language where the
Kai> amount of white space makes a difference, even more so than in
Kai> Fortran.
Kai> Personally, I consider such a language completely
Kai> unmaintainable. Perl has many style bugs, but nothing as bad as
Kai> that. </mode>
Kai> Anyway, as long as *I* don't have to maintain it ... :-)
<mode=toned-down-language-holy-war>
The indent level determines the blocks of python code. It is easy to
do (with any half intelligent editor). It reduces the clutter you see
in most languages ( { and } anyone?), and it just uses what everyone
does anyway (indent everything by block) as the block delimiters
rather than requiring another set of begin/end, {/} delimiters.
I suspect (with no evidence to back this up of course) that most
people would find Python much easier to maintain and read than perl.
(hell my completely non-technical best friend from high school is
learning python at the moment and having no trouble)
Look at the language before you make judgments. It is rather nice
(though I still prefer scheme :), and there are some very large
projects using it currently and having no problems (which IMO perl is
not meant to do (though the modules in perl5 make this much better)).
And in case you suspect me of being a python bigot :) I do most of my
daily work in perl. I like both, but don't discount it because of one
thing you don't like (which IMO is actually a good thing even though
it takes a little getting used to). </mode>
(Why I'm defending I'm not quite sure. I was dubious about it to
begin with because of the whitespace issue. It isn't an issue.
(Unless you want to write obfuscated code. That's hard to do (though
not impossible)).
Jim
--
@James LewisMoss <dres@dimensional.com> | Blessed Be!
@ http://www.dimensional.com/~dres | Linux is cool!
@"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." Bach
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