Typed Python?

[Hamilcar Barca]

In article <du7eknmlsug.fsf at amadeus.cc.tut.fi> (Thu, 08 Jul 2004 13:02:31
+0300), Ville Vainio wrote:

>     Hamilcar> Is this a good place to insert my "Smalltalk is the only
>     Hamilcar> language good enough for teaching people to program"
>     Hamilcar> rant?
> 
> What's better about Smalltalk compared to Python, educationally?

Although I meant what I said, I said it here as a joke.

> Just a brief list will do.

I don't seem to be able to provide coherent, objective arguments, at
least beyond the ones you might find at Smalltalk.org or Squeak.org.

Here's an entirely subjective opinion after over twenty years of
programming.

Among others, I learned Python and Smalltalk in the last year. I didn't
particularly like Python for the first three or four weeks before it began
to grow on me.  It wasn't exactly what I was used to and it took me some
time to discover its strengths.

Contrarily, it took me no more than a day or two to really like the
Smalltalk language and its environment.  After a few weeks, I was
quite surprised at the environment's capabilities: I discovered I was
doing some things I didn't realize any environment could do.  I hadn't
read about them or done more than a little experimentation, they just
seemed natural.  For example, it's trivially easy to stop a program's
execute, view and fiddle about with objects and code, and then continue on.

My conclusion, for what little it's worth, was "This is the way it was
intended to be."

-- 
[Microsoft's] illegal conduct has enabled [it] to acquire a dominant
 position in the market for work group server operating systems ..."
-- European Commission ruling.  24 March 2004.