Python advocacy

[Paul Prescod]

Bijan Parsia wrote:
> 
> P.P.S. Please notice my manfully refraining from commenting on Paul's
> comments on Smaltalk in that article. 

No, go ahead. I might as well get it right for subsequent discussions.

> Especially since they were, to a
> quibbler like myself, not *exactly* correct. But hey, it's an advocacy
> piece. And he certainly did try to be nice :)

That's right. I didn't advance any theories about reasons for Lisp and
Smalltalk's status.

> P.P.P.P.S It was certainly a much better article than that wretched Ruby
> one, though I do detect a slight tension between these quotes:
>         "C++ and Perl only make sense if you have a particular
>         programming background"
> and
>         "Python merges many of Smalltalk's ideas with a syntax that is
>         more likely to appeal to C, C++ and Java programmers".

Very slight. :) Python is close enough to be recognizable and far enough
to dump all of the weird stuff. C++ and Perl didn't have the good sense
to dump junk. Java went a little farther into the C camp than Python
which explains why I have flame mail telling me that Java is "basically
the same as C++". The Java motto: Confuse 'em with familiar syntax!

> I rather suspect it appeals more to Pascal and Modula-2 programmers :)

Well that's the point. Everyone likes Python.

> And poor Dylan, which sold it's soul to mixfix only to be doomed to
> obscurity, in the general world, and scorn from its progeniters.

Syntax only counts once you get sufficiently far across the chasm that
mainstream programmers get a chance to evaluate it!

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
"We still do not know why mathematics is true and whether it is
certain. But we know what we do not know in an immeasurably richer way
than we did. And learning this has been a remarkable achievement,
among the greatest and least known of the modern era." 
        - from "Advent of the Algorithm" David Berlinski
	http://www.opengroup.com/mabooks/015/0151003386.shtml