From: Bob Calco <rcalco@...>
Date: 2001-11-27T13:10:09+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26609] Re: Ruby vs. Python: Decisions, Decisions

# >     >> Python sucks.
#
# > Just wait.  If Ruby becomes popular, the community will go downhill.
# > c.l.python was great a few years ago.
#
# Not the community, the language. Python contains miserable technical
# decisions committed early, and patches added on in later versions
# (such as
# "lambda").
#
# --
# Phlip

I don't think Python sucks at all. Even if I go with Ruby, I'm sure I'll be
thinking "Hmm, I could have done it in Python this way"... and now vice
versa. Maybe because of my Windows background, I judge sucky languages
according to the suckiest language in existence, Visual Basic, and compared
to Visual Basic, Python rocks.

(Finally, as of version 7.0, VB is going to discover inheritance, exception
handling, etc. -- of course its not really VB under the hood anymore but
.NET's IL.)

Python's creator, Guido van Rossum, is no lite-weight, and he's rather
deliberately designed python the way it is (for good or ill). You either
agree with his decisions or you don't -- but to call them miserable implies
a level of sinister stupidity that simply cannot be imputed to him. If
you've ever seen the level of debate that goes into a Python Enhancement
Proposal, you'd realize that Guido has a very particular philosophy and he
applies it with brutal consistency to Python's development. His philosophy
is rather different than Larry Walls, or Matz's, or Ousterhout's (sp?), so
as a result, there are four rather different more-or-less-well-known
scripting languages that do many of the same things, and the world is a
better place for each of them.

As I've said, I like Ruby's OOP a lot better, and kudos to Matz for coming
up with what appears to be the most impressive OO scripting language around.
The more I play with it, and learn to appreciate it's subtleties, the more
impressed I am. :)

So let's keep the discussion at that level. What we like, what's good, what
we don't like (with reasons, not just pejoratives), and contribute what we
know openly, honestly, and, where appropriate, humbly. ;)

Sincerely,

Bob Calco