Named code blockes

[Douglas Alan]

"Steve  Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> > By doing so, you lower the barier to allowing people to accomplish
> > what they want to accomplish.  Isn't that what a high-level language
> > is all about?

> Yes. But the experience of PL/1 would tend to suggest that the
> all-embracing suitable-for-all-problems language tends to become a
> dog's breakfast. The phrase which comes to mind here is "jack of all
> trades, master of none". I suspect Ada might be the same, but since
> I've never used it this is only speculation.

These languages fail because they put everything into the language,
rather than providing the tools to allow most things to be done by
libraries.

> Well, again I find myself in less-than-total agreement here. I'd
> much rather have a toolkit than a Swiss Army knife with 113 blades.

Python is already a Swiss Army knife, with *batteries included*.  The
secret is that most of the blades are in the libraries where they
belong.  The best general purpose languages will be the ones with the
best tools for building blades that can be put into libraries.

> > Well, you clearly don't prefer Python as much as me, since I'd prefer
> > to use it for everything.

> Yes, but at least now you know *why* I wouldn't prefer to use it for
> everything. I believe (and think Alex does too) that to add too many
> features would lead Python away from its present elegant simplicity
> (never forgetting the "print >>" wart, about which I will bug the
> implementation team forever, since I don't believe for a second they
> will destroy backwards compatibilty by taking it out).

If Python had an extensible syntax, everyone could have their way.
The solution would be to take "print" out of the langauge altogether
(it doesn't really belong in it) and move it into a library.

|>oug