Python Popularity: Questions and Comments

[brueckd at tbye.com]

On Sun, 30 Dec 2001, Ulf Magnusson wrote:

> Yes I would be, personally I like to think of Python as the Inverse of C.
> C is:
> Easy to learn
> Genrates fast code
> and you have to write many lines of code to accomplish something.
>
> Python is:
> Hard to learn (well relativly to C)

For whom would it be harder to learn Python than C? You mentioned later
that you had used C and only C for many years, so I'm curious as to how
you came to that conclusion.

> Generates piss pore performance code (I am sorry to say)

Hmmm... this doesn't exactly fit with the other two parts of your
inverse-of-C function as 90+% of the time both C and Python performance is
"fast enough". Most programs have a minimum performance requirement that
is easy to reach, and the ones that are harder are not all CPU bound (e.g.
rewriting in C an I/O bound Python server could result in little or no
performance gains).

-Dave