"sins" (aka, acknowledged language problems)

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

On Thu, Dec 16, 1999 at 09:59:12PM -0500, Tim Peters wrote:
> There is not.  A couple years ago I started a thread (see DejaNews) called
> "Why Python Stinks", hoping to uncover enough suppressed outrage to write a
> similar article about Python (my motivation was much like yours below).
> People were kind enough to whine about their pet peeves, but there was no
> consensus!
[.. the usual well-balanced Tim-stuff snipped ... you all know how it goes..]

In other words, for the "average person" -- that is the one over there with
2.4 children and 1.83 legs -- Python is *perfect* (on at least 5 days out of
every 7)? Good to hear!

More seriously, I am somebody who had to overcome an early attraction to the
darker side of scripting (a.k.a. Perl) before discovering Python last year. I
pretty much agree with the "Seven Deadly Sins of Pearl" and with Tim's
comments on it. Having watched the periodic "Why Python sucks" threads on here
over time, I must again agree with the "there is no consensus"-consensus.
Everybody has their pet gripes, but few seem to stop using Python because of
it (Perl's almost built in obfuscation was actually discouraging me from using
it, to give an example of the other side of this coin).

There was a point to me writing this initially .... here we go ... found it
again: 

I suspect (attach credibility to this at your own risk) that the lack of an
acknowledged set of "deadly sins" in Python may be due to two reasons:

(1) Python is younger than Perl and was "designed" rather than "evolved"
(I'm thinking of Guido's efforts to write a better ABC here. Since I am not a
qualified Python historian, I am willing to accept corrections on this
gracefully.) Guido and other contributors looked at what was available,
assessed their weaknesses and strengths and tried to put together something
that was "sensible" in their opinion.

(2) The Python community is still smaller than the Perl community and a random
sweep through many computer systems will uncover more Perl scripts than
Python scripts. Maybe we ("the community") just haven't reached a large enough
mass yet to generate the required hatred of certain features.

[Note: I am not actually anti-Perl despite what it may look like here. I just
prefer Python]

Just my thoughts,
Malcolm Tredinnick

--
Quantum physics: the dreams stuff is made of