Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme
Jens Axel Søgaard
usenet at jasoegaard.dk
Sat Oct 4 13:24:06 EDT 2003
Alex Martelli wrote:
> Essentially, Guido prefers classes (and instances thereof) to
> closures as a way to bundle state and behavior; thus he most
> emphatically does not want to add _any_ complication at all,
> when the only benefit would be to have "more than one obvious
> way to do it".
>
> Guido's generally adamant stance for simplicity has been the
> key determinant in the evolution of Python.
The following is taken from "All Things Pythonic - News from Python UK"
written by Guido van Rossum April 17,
<2003:http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4550>
During Simon's elaboration of an example (a type-safe printf function)
I realized the problem with functional programming: there was a simple
programming problem where a list had to be transformed into a
different list. The code to do this was a complex two-level lambda
expression if I remember it well, and despite Simon's lively
explanation (he was literally hopping around the stage making
intricate hand gestures to show how it worked) I failed to "get" it. I
finally had to accept that it did the transformation without
understanding how it did it, and this is where I had my epiphany about
loops as a higher level of abstraction than recursion - I'm sure that
the same problem would be easily solved by a simple loop in Python,
and would leave no-one in the dark about what it did.
Hmm.
--
Jens Axel Søgaard
More information about the Python-list
mailing list