age of new pythonistas [was: The Editor Poll results are in!]

[François Pinard]

[Ville Vainio]

> Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> writes:

> Ditto with TCL. When I see 8 backslashes in a row, I look elsewhere
> ;-).

One may be rebuked by surface aspects, indeed.  But seriously, we have to
go deeper than that before asserting that a language is badly designed.

> > > I think Python is great because it is well designed (unlike Perl),
> > 
> > Wait, didn't you give up on Perl before you knew it well enough to make
> > that kind of statement?

> One really doesn't have to know all that much about perl to make that
> statement - reading "Programming Perl" or some other perl book is enough.

Even if I prefer Python to Perl, I would never even think that Perl is not
well designed.  When I was using Perl, as a user (not as a reader of books
about it :-), I found that Perl allowed me to quickly write my code, it
was full of good ideas, and I felt the language quite fulfilled its promises.

On the other hand, Perl was probably not designed according to my own tastes,
and it is true that Python fits my tastes much better; the gained comfort
alone is the source of some proficiency.  But not sharing my tastes does not
make something necessarily bad.  And besides, wandering around a bit with an
opened mind allows someone to improve its culture and to evolve his tastes.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard