Why did no one invent Python before?

[Michael Sparks]

On 4 Jun 2004, Lothar Scholz wrote:

> Michael Sparks <zathras at thwackety.com> wrote...

> > At that point, someone might come along and say "I can't believe how much
> > more productive I am with [random flippant examples]
...
> That already happened: the language is called Eiffel.
>
> Checking all pre- and postconditions and invariants on each call was
> terrible slow when i started my project with a PIV 400 MHz. It was
> mostly impossible to use on normal size data sets. Now i use a PIV
> 2800 and give away my product (http://www.ruby-ide.com :-) with all
> runtime checks enabled. This makes my programming style much much
> better.

Never suggested that the specific examples weren't possible today - in a
way, you've demonstrated the point I was trying to make. After all, Eiffel
was around 15 years ago as well, but the aspects you mention weren't
practical for realtime, but as you demonstrate it is possible now :-)

On the flipside though, I'm not aware of a language that does the other
example I suggested as a "realtime" language construct ;-)


Michael.