Python as a Beverage

[Warren Postma]

"James Lockley" <jpl at global.co.za> wrote:
> Just been reading a "Ruby centric" comparison of Ruby
>vs Python on: http://helium.ruby-lang.org/en/compar.html

My 2 cents:  This has been done to death, and since it is categorically
impossible to put objectively, I think poetic license is called for.

I felt that in Ruby there was too much of the "Perl" way of doing things:
Odd punctuation, odd little operators and naming, and what felt to me like
unintuitive syntax and conventions.
The core Python syntax and coding patterns were "compact" and I absorbed
them very easily.
[ Except for the much-over-discussed existence of both Tuples and Lists,
which later made sense, and the meanings
of "lambda" and "map", which now seem to fit, but which originally I did not
understand. ]

Nevertheless, I could write anything I wanted pretty much right away in
Python, without the
"Borrowed from functional languages" stuff.

With that in mind, I would put it this way:

    Python = Jolt Cola (All the Sugar, and Twice the Caffeine. Watch out for
the side effects.)

    Ruby = Pepsi Cola (Much Better than New Coke, but not a replacement for
Old Coke or Jolt, for me)

    Perl = Liquid Invert Sugar and Caffeine in an intravenous drip bag
(Let's not beat around the bush anymore, let's just go and do some damage.)

    C = Classic Coke (Still can't live without it.  Python, for instance, is
written in C.)

    C++ and Java = New Coke (Can definitely live without it, but other
people swear by it)

    Smalltalk =  Tonic Water with a slice of Lemon (I'm not quite ascetic
enough to appreciate it, but I appreciate people who appreciate it.)

    Lisp or Functional Languages = Hot Water  (Some people can drink hot
water with nothing in it. I don't understand it. Neither do I understand
Lisp or Functional programmers.)

Analogys-R-Us-ly-y'rs-
    Warren