'==' vs. 'is' behavior

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
> I'm a bit minimalist while programming.  Or, to say the same thing another
> way, I rather like Arvo Part's music.  When a program source is just

In the article at
http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/issues/vol1_1/tpj0101-0002.html
(excerpted in Linux Journal, Larry Wall writes, as part of an extended
metaphor:

	And languages specialize in other ways: BASIC is like pop
	music. Tune into REXX for your easy listening classics. Tcl is
	fuzzy like jazz - you get to improvise a lot, and you're never
	quite sure who is interpreting what. Python is like MTV - it
	rocks, but it gets to be much of a sameness after half an hour
	or so.

(Out-of-context quoters can have fun by inserting ellipses after "it
rocks". :) ) At the time I thought the Python comparison was a bit
odd, and didn't really see the point.  Python is more like a
collection of tiny interacting modules; no one module is very
complicated, but put them together and they intermesh and interweave
in a beautiful way over time. [1] Over time the modules fall together
in slightly different patterns, and, though the difference between
iterations is slight, the resulting shift can completely change the
effect of the whole piece.

Ergo, Python is a Steve Reich composition. [2]

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
Persichetti could do everything and do it well, but you didn't really care.
    -- Steve Reich, on his former composition teacher Vincent Persichetti

[1] I imagine Lisp and Scheme fans think of programs in those 
    languages in an analogous way.

[2] A comparison to Terry Riley's "In C" would be even closer -- it's
    an open score where each musician has a melody, and they play it as
    often as they like, whenever they like, as long as they don't stray
    too far from the path -- but I like Reich better.