Is Python the Esperanto of programming languages?

[Christopher A. Craig]

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> writes:

> Carl Banks wrote:
> 
> > I say redundancy is not required at all for a language, and most
> > languages have very little of it.  Sometimes what looks like
> > redundancy isn't really redundancy, but rather superfluousness.
> 
> That sounds like a distinction without a difference.  It isn't
> redundancy because you choose not to call it redundancy, you'd rather
> call it superfluousness.

It's not redundancy because it doesn't a duplicate copy of information
found elsewhere in the sentence.  "these men" contains duplicate
copies of the fact that there is a plural subject, and thus is
redundant.  Verb tenses is the only thing that indicates tense and
thus is not redundant (nor, in my opinion, superfluous).  A better
example, imho, of superfluousness in English is articles.  "man went
to store" is perfectly clear.  True, it could have been "a man", "the
man", or "this man" but I think it resonable to presume that the
listener knew whether or not the man was definate.

-- 
Christopher A. Craig <list-python at ccraig.org>
"You could shoot Microsoft Office off the planet and this country would
 run better. You would see everyone standing around saying, 'I've got
 so much time now.' "  Scott McNealy (CEO of Sun)