Pythonistas? <- Re: OT: Perl programmers?

[David Eppstein]

In article <a46uqm$gc7$1 at peabody.colorado.edu>,
 Fernando Pérez <fperez528 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Indeed, it's just the Spanish form of the 'ist' English suffix (pianist, 
> violinist, etc.) It simply means 'who performs an activity'.
> 
> Its use is more common in Spanish than in English, though (pianista, 
> violinista, but also futbolista, tenista, equilibrista, ...). Interestingly, 
> even though in Spanish the -a ending typically denotes a feminine noun, the 
> -ista ending applies to both male and female practitioners.

Another English-language example, seen in today's Los Angeles Times 
Magazine: fashionista.  Google reports about 4500 English examples...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/