What does Python fix?

[Steven Majewski]

On 18 Jan 2002, Andrew Kuchling wrote:

> Indeed.  In an interview with Kent Pitman on Slashdot, I was shocked
> when he wrote:
>
> 	In my recent professional life, I have personally written
> 	several XML parsers, all in Lisp, for various employers and
> 	most recently for myself and my fledgling company.
>
> (At http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/03/1726251)
>
> I'm unable to understand why you wouldn't just write the code once and
> make it available, rather than implementing the same thing over and
> over.

There's also the Charles Moore (inventor of Forth) philosopy:

 Use a language that's very compact and expressive so programs are short.

 Learn to be very good at it.

 Don't use libraries: they are ineffecient and bloated because they
   try to be general purpose. ( and don't write you're code to
   try to do everything. )

 Rewrite everything: by the time you've written your fifth or sixth
  XML parser, you will be very good at it and you will have
  discovered some good tricks to do it better.


The main problem with this approach is that not everyone is Chuck Moore!

-- Steve