Choosing a programming language as a competitive tool

[Alex Martelli]

"Andrew Henshaw" <andrew_dot_henshaw_at_earthling_dot_net> wrote in message
news:tfepl4sult229f at corp.supernews.com...
    ...
> > Support your shopping lists ARE order-significant.  For
    ...
> The shopping lists that my wife gives to me are ordered.  She orders them
by
> the item's location in the store - it makes the shopping much faster!
(Man,
> I never thought I'd have to bring this up in any newsgroup.)

I use the same strategy for the shopping lists I make for
myself -- then, once in a while, the store goes on some
reorganization binge, moving the locations of half the
items I generally buy, and after suitable amounts of
swearing and time-wasting I tend to drop that strategy
for a while (but then, after another while, I realize it's
a mess anyway when the store does get reorganized, as it
takes forever to find anything regardless of how my own
shopping list is structured, so...).

I also keep telling myself that I need to move to a "pack
of index cards" implementation strategy -- that writing
things down every time is really silly, particularly when
I'm in one of my "ordered shopping lists" periods -- then
I start wondering about writing a Python program to print
the shopping lists out for me in appropriate order, then
from that I move to analysis of the GUI I'd like to use
for a shopping-list preparation program -- how best to
organize and edit the data about current store order, add
new items that are likely to be once-only, add items that
are likely to recur, ... and end up scribbling lists in
haste by hand anyway.  Darn, worse *IS* better...!-)


Alex