[OPINION] - does language really matter if they all do the samething?

[Dietrich Epp]

I was wrong about that example.  I thought I made that clear in a later 
post.  My point was that some paradigms are more Pythonic than others.  
I think the only good case I made was the 'choose-random' table.  I 
don't generally feel constrained by Python, but Python is simply not 
the right tool for every job.  When I want to write a program, I first 
think "How will this program work?" and then "What language most 
naturally expresses this idea?"

With the 'choose-random' problem, my first idea was to write a Python 
program.  I could not easily express my idea in Python.  I could 
express my idea in Lisp, therefore, I used Lisp.  I believe this 
decision to be rational.  In this case, I felt very constrained by 
Python.  My offer still stands: if anyone can express my idea in Python 
(not counting future versions of Python) in a way that is approximately 
as simple as how I expressed it in Lisp, I will post a picture of 
myself with "Python Rulz" written on my forehead.

Someone accused me of not using Python to its full potential.  I took 
that as tantamount to accusing me of being a bad programmer.  I had a 
point, gave a good example, a bunch of bad examples, and tried to avoid 
making it personal.  If anyone wants to go back and show how stupid 
some of my examples were, let me save you from wasting your precious 
free time: THOSE EXAMPLES WERE STUPID.  Now that there is NO 
DISAGREEMENT, I don't see how beating this poor dead horse is going to 
accomplish anything even by Usenet standards.  All those posts pointing 
out how stupid those examples were were all regurgitating the same 
information anyway.  As for the Lisp example, I have yet to see a 
Python implementation that stands up to even the most trivial 
inspection, so I don't expect to defend it any further.  In effect, the 
most productive thing that this thread can now accomplish is personal 
attacks and holy wars.

In order to reduce the amount of traffic on this list, I preemptively 
call anyone responding to this message either wrong or troll, so I 
don't have to explicitly write that as a response.

The previous paragraph is not intended to be serious.