ANN: Python Powerpoint slideshow

[Kevin Altis]

This is probably a good time to quote a section from Mark Pilgrim's
DiveIntoPython [http://diveintopython.org/odbchelper_funcdef.html]

  An erudite reader sent me this explanation of how Python compares to other
programming languages:

    statically typed language
    A language in which types are fixed at compile time. Most statically
typed languages enforce this by requiring you to declare all variables with
their datatypes before using them. Java and C are statically typed
languages.
    dynamically typed language
    A language in which types are discovered at execution time; the opposite
of statically typed. VBScript and Python are dynamically typed, because they
figure out what type a variable is when you first assign it a value.
    strongly typed language
    A language in which types are always enforced. Java and Python are
strongly typed. If you have an integer, you can't treat it like a string
without explicitly converting it.
    weakly typed language
    A language in which types may be ignored; the opposite of strongly
typed. VBScript is weakly typed. In VBScript, you can concatenate the string
'12' and the integer 3 to get the string '123', then treat that as the
integer 123, all without any explicit conversion.
  So Python is both dynamically typed (because it doesn't use explicit
datatype declarations) and strongly typed (because once a variable has a
datatype, it actually matters).

  ka

"Stephen Ferg" <steve at ferg.org> wrote in message
news:b16e4ef7.0305190508.747fe35e at posting.google.com...
> http://home.att.net/~stephen_ferg/projects/python_java_side-by-side.html

The discussion of dynamic vs. static, and strong vs. weak, typing
wasn't really satisfactory, so I've added an appendix that discusses
these terms.

It might be a useful resource if you get into a debate as to whether
Python is, for instance, "strongly" typed or not.

-- Steve