Python and Ruby , object oriented questions

[Roman Suzi]

On 20 May 2001, Elf Sternberg wrote:

>In article <mailman.989895622.17826.python-list at python.org>
>    Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:
>
>>There is some truth to this but I don't think it is the whole truth.
>>Most people become Python advocates while they still have much larger
>>investments in other languages. The new converts are often the most
>>vocal, right?
>
>        True.  When I shifted over, it was something of a religious
>conversion to the point where I felt guilty when I tossed off a 'perl
>-pi.bak' construction.
>
>>It's like political parties. You want your programming language to
>>succeed because it captures your beliefs about how the (computer) world
>>should work.
>
>        One of the things I've learned over the years is that there
>isn't much to languages themselves.  I have a bit of trouble wrapping my
>head around some language classes, such as those examplified by Haskell,
>Scheme, or Forth.  But when it comes to the procedural languages (like
>C) and those with an object-oriented option (such as C++, Java, Perl,
>and Python) I have no trouble with the language _syntax_, because, to be
>honest, there isn't much there there.  Do I use '==' or '=' (or 'eq'!)
>in an if statement, do I use '=' or ':=' in an assignment, what do I use
>for scoping: these are all trivial.
>
>        The real barrier to any language is the libraries that come with
>it.  What made Perl and Python _real_ successes with its users was that
>the libraries are similar enough to the C which we had to work with in
>the late 1980's.  When these languages came along, the regular
>expressions were familiar to us and the things we could do were things
>we were used to doing.  Plus, the authors of these languages had the
>foresight to make interfacing with even a poorly-thought-out C interface
>a task even a mediocre programmer could accomplish.
>
>        I suspect this is the reason why Java is such a hit among
>college students learning a language for the first time, but has had
>trouble inroads into the existing Unix/Linux communities.  The Java
>libraries, however well-conceived and paradigmatically "pure" they may
>be, are unfamiliar to those of us who have been programming to the Unix
>'C' libraries for so long.
>
>        Any language that hopes to acquire a significant amount of
>mindshare must have both a compellingly useful syntax and a library that
>the user can readily grasp and do something with.  Python and Perl both
>succeed in the second, and whether or not they succeed at the first is,
>well, a matter of personal preference (and religious wars).

UNIX and thus C and Pyhton libs are POSIX-conformant (i.e.
standard). Java changes too rapidly to "Write once, run everywhere".

And I don't know about you, but after learning Python it is
extremely tough to write in Perl again... It's not religious,
it's probably objective.


>                Elf
>
>--
>Elf M. Sternberg, rational romantic mystical cynical idealist
>http://www.halcyon.com/elf/
>
>Dvorak Keyboards: Frgp ucpoy ncb. ru e.bu.bj.
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
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