Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[Scott McIntire]

"Kenny Tilton" <ktilton at nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:_8Ekb.7543$pT1.318 at twister.nyc.rr.com...
>
>
> Joachim Durchholz wrote:
>
> > Oh, you're trolling for an inter-language flame fest...
> > well, anyway:
> >
> >> 3. no multimethods (why? Guido did not know Lisp, so he did not know
> >>    about them) You now have to suffer from visitor patterns, etc. like
> >>     lowly Java monkeys.
> >
> >
> > Multimethods suck.
> >
> > The longer answer: Multimethods have modularity issues
>
> Lisp consistently errs on the side of more expressive power. The idea of
> putting on a strait jacket while coding to protect us from ourselves
> just seems batty. Similarly, a recent ex-C++ journal editor recently
> wrote that test-driven development now gives him the code QA peace of
> mind he once sought from strong static typing. An admitted former static
> typing bigot, he finished by wondering aloud, "Will we all be coding in
> Python ten years from now?"
>
> kenny
>

There was a nice example from one of the ILC 2003 talks about a Europian
Space Agency rocket exploding with a valueable payload. My understanding was
that there was testing, but maybe too much emphasis was placed the static
type checking of the language used to control the rocket. The end result was
a run time arithmetic overflow which the code intepreted as "rocket off
course". The rocket code instructions in this event were to self destruct.
It seems to me that the Agency would have fared better if they just used
Lisp - which has bignums - and relied more on regression suites and less on
the belief that static type checking systems would save the day.

 I'd be interested in hearing more about this from someone who knows the
details.

-R. Scott McIntire