Long Live Python!

[Peter Hansen]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
> > No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10 miles",
> > it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?
> 
> Sure, and if I say "I never strangle British citizens on Saturdays", that
> cannot be taken as meaning that you are at risk on other days of the
> week, nor that people of other nationalities are at risk today -- however,
> depending on context, there is a *fair inference* (in human language
> usage, although not in the Aristotelic logic simplification thereof) that
> I'm likely to have a specific reason for what would be overqualification
> of my sentence IF I never strangled anybody at all on any day of the week.

I think you've left the original context behind, Alex.  Phil was responding
specifically to my parenthetical comment about the phrase "scripting
language".  I said "(whatever that means)".  It was almost independent of
anything to do with Python.

So he was nicely clarifying a term we were using so that we would be
able to agree on a useful definition (which I think we subsequently did).

>> Phil Hunt wrote:
>> > Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>> >>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>> >>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>> >>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
>> >
>> >To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>> >that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>> >lines of C++.

If we rewrite history, what we said was actually this:

Peter wrote:
> I think of Python as an effective general-purpose language. 
> Python *also* works very well as a "scripting language".
> By the way, can we define what we mean by the term "scripting language".

Phil wrote:
> The term "scripting language" has the connotation of "good for
> short programs, <100 lines".  

If you think Phil needs to qualify that, I suspect there are many
even more critical cases we would need to qualify in half the postings
to c.l.p.  Of course, maybe we should have added:

Peter:
> Maybe someone will misinterpret your comment.  Just to clarify,
> you aren't saying you think Python is *only* good for scripting
> according to our agreed definition, are you?  You are actually
> agreeing with my statement that Python *also* works very well
> as a scripting language.  Some people might think you meant 
> something different.

Phil:
> Yes, Peter.  That's exactly what I meant.  Good thing we caught
> that ambiguity before it developed into a little Usenet noise-fest.

Peter:
> That's what I thought, too.  Thanks, Phil.

:-)
 
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com