Python evangelists unite!

[Christian Tanzer]

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:

> > > > I use Python as a good, quick and dirty hacking language. For real
> > > > (read production) stuff that I expect a customer to run or will
> > > > require more than a single person working for a couple of hours, I
> > > > look elsewhere :-).
> > >
> > > Like what?
> 
> What about languages such as Oberon, Modula-2/3, Smalltalk, Java, Pascal,
> Ada plus many others.

Interesting collection.

Having used several of them I wouldn't prefer them over Python for
most kinds of production stuff (with the exception of Ada for
hard real-time applications -- and guess what, for the RT stuff C has
to be used in my customer's circles <sigh>).

And Smalltalk clearly has more things in common with Python than with
the other languages you mention.

> > > > They could have been more productive with other languages that provide
> > > > better support for generic software engineering principles/standards.
> > >
> > > What other languages? What principles/standards?
(snipped third party interpretation)
> No, I didn't mean 'generic' in that sense :-). I was refering more to the
> concepts of information hiding, programming via 'contract', pre/post
> conditions, types and type checking, compile time checking i.e. mispell a
> variable in Python and spend ages looking for it! :-) run-time checking etc
> etc (I could think up others, but these will do for the time being :-)).

Do you remember Ariane 5? The one thing they didn't do was to test the
software in the new environment... 

I also find it amusing that you don't mention the one language which
actually supports pre/post conditions out of the box (BTW, it is a lot
easier to add support for pre/post conditions to Python (and
Smalltalk) than to your favorite languages).

Christian

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
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