Typed Python?

[Neil Benn]

Michael Sparks wrote:

>On 6 Jul 2004, Ville Vainio wrote:
>
>  
>
>>"Real" work is admittedly a bit careless choice of words. Non-academic
>>work is often more concerned with delivering stuff, while academic
>>work is more exploratory in nature
>>    
>>
>
>That's not really the best distinction IME. Non-academic work can be
>exploratory in nature as well. For me the real difference is with academia
>something not working/panning out is just as interesting/valid in many
>respects as something suceeding - indeed in some cases more interesting.
>In non-academia, something not suceeding normally means overhead to the
>business, and increasing the costs to the company. In severe cases if this
>continues companies involved and go bust.
>  
>

><snip>
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>  
>

Hello,

          Good description of academic vs. Industrial, except for the 
point on 'programmers who have C-Like syntax finding python easy to pick 
up', IMO python poses a challenge to people who are coding in languages 
such as Java and C#.  The main issue is getting your head around the 
paradigm of 'trusting your client'.  Coming from Java I'm desperately 
trying to not write code that forces Python to behave like Java - there 
are several cases where I don't want my client to change something in my 
class but I want to change in my own, separate, class - package level 
scope.  In addition, the point of scope being a 'hint' to the client 
that they should obey the rules and not change something which is 
'private' is a very alien concept to me.  I understand the arguments for 
this but it goes against my natural way of thinking.  The same goes for 
dynamic typing, again I understand the arguments for this but not having 
the ability to 'fail-fast' when my client does something stupid is 
alien.  I know that I can encode these rules myself but I have to 
consciously try to not attempt to cram Python into my way of thinking 
gained in other languages.

    The syntactical things are learnt to go away (no ';' at the end of a 
line, conditionals in break not having brackets, using tabs instead of 
braces) after a bit but that's the same with 'most' language learning.

    However, I do think that new programmers would like Python's cleaner 
syntax - the only problem is that they will have to learn 'C-Like' 
syntax at some point or they will be stuck in one language forever 
more!  As you can probably guess - I'm from the industrial world.

Cheers,

Neil

-- 

Neil Benn
Senior Automation Engineer
Cenix BioScience
BioInnovations Zentrum
Tatzberg 47
D-01307
Dresden
Germany

Tel : +49 (0)351 4173 154
e-mail : benn at cenix-bioscience.com
Cenix Website : http://www.cenix-bioscience.com