Python vs Ruby

[Jorge Godoy]

aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

> forwards a lot to Python 3.0!-).  But -- the "dream" solution would be
> to work closely with customers from the start, XP-style, so features go
> into the code in descending order of urgence and importance and it's
> hardly ever necessary to remove them.

We do that often with two of our customers here.  After the first changes,
they asked for more.  And them some other and when it finally ended, the
project was like we had suggested, but instead of doing this directly, the
client wanted to waste more money... :-(  Even if we earnt more money, I'd
rather have the first proposal accepted instead of wasting time working on
what they called "essential features". 

> But if I had do nominate ONE use case for "making code smaller" it would
> be: "Once, And Only Once" (aka "Don't Repeat Yourself").  Scan your code
> ceaselessly mercilessly looking for duplications and refactor just as
> mercilessly when you find them, "abstracting the up" into functions,
> base classes, etc...

And I'd second that.  Code can be drastically reduced this way and even
better: it can be made more generic, more useful and robustness is improved. 

-- 
Jorge Godoy      <godoy at ieee.org>