Paul Graham on Python hackers

[ellisjb at my-deja.com]

Yeah, but Graham goes on to lump perl in with python, so he clearly
doesn't know what he's talking about. :)

(In all seriousness I think python and java have a lot more in common
than python and perl.)

-Jonathan

Original Message Follows:
> Paul Graham's recent book "Hackers & Painters" may be interesting
> readers for Python programmers. He likes flexible languages like
> Python, although Lisp is his favorite. Here is a quote from his book,
> also online at http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html , where he contrasts
> Python and Java programmers. He is opinionated :).
>
> "When you decide what infrastructure to use for a project, you're not
> just making a technical decision. You're also making a social
> decision, and this may be the more important of the two. For example,
> if your company wants to write some software, it might seem a prudent
> choice to write it in Java. But when you choose a language, you're
> also choosing a community. The programmers you'll be able to hire to
> work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to
> work on a project written in Python. [2] And the quality of your
> hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though,
> frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell
> you something about the relative merits of those languages.