Does Python help with the no-Unix handicap?

[Alex Martelli]

<mkx at excite.com> wrote in message
news:1d09kssdshm96qgilpm7rabmibt2blmv5j at 4ax.com...
> On 12 Jun 2000 06:11:44 GMT, dana_booth <dana at oz.net> wrote:
>
> >mec: So my question is this: Is Python a more "Windows-friendly"
language?
> >
> >Okay, I couldn't leave this alone. :)
> >
> >I think "Windows-friendly" is relative. I know Windows only programmers
who
> >can out-Perl just about anyone. (FWIW, I'm in the UNIX crowd. :)
>
> I should have replaced "Windows-friendly" with "less painful to
> non-Unix users"...

I think it's "less painful", period.  I come from a long and deep
Unix programming background, though with some mainframe and VMS at
the start and mostly-Windows/NT today, and I used Perl for many, many
years -- because I didn't know of anything better; when I finally
discovered Python, I soon started junking all of my Perl stuff, and
rewriting it in Python.  Today, I don't think I have any Perl left,
and the relief is still palpable.  Maintaining/tweaking something I
wrote 6 months ago thinking it was a use-once-then-throw-away (the
common case) is a light, enjoyable task rather than a nightmare.


> So, to a degree, some of the attraction to Python is that can me "more
> fun." And after a while, that can be important too.

Do get Hammond and Robinson's "Python programming on Win32", O'Reilly.

It's an excellent book, and will give you lots of hints about Windows
stuff that's good knowledge/background to know, *as well as* indications
and examples on how to work it with Python.  The contrast with the
equivalent Perl book, full of hacks and underuse/misunderstanding of
both Perl and Windows potential, couldn't be more striking IMHO.  It
bespeaks a different cultural mindset, "just hack together something
that may roughly work, with a couple of mysterious half-understood
idioms thrown in for good measure" vs "do it RIGHT"...


Alex