Is there no end to Python?

Magnus Lycka lycka at carmen.se
Mon Mar 20 05:23:57 EST 2006


John Salerno wrote:
> But isn't Python sort of known for the opposite, i.e. 'one simple way', 
> or something to that effect?

If we compare it with the "opposite" language--Perl, and think
of these languages as natural languages, rather than programming
languages, Perl's inventor Larry Wall, felt that having a lot of
synonymns and allowing a lot of flexibility in word order etc,
would make it easier to express one's ideas well.

Python's inventor Guido van Rossum took a different approach. With
fewer synonyms and a less redundant grammer, it will be easier to
master the language, and certainly easier to read texts written by
others.

I don't know, but I suspect that the difference in approach is
rooted in Guido's understanding that we typically spend much more
time reading source code than we spend writing source code.

As it turns out, having fewer synonyms and grammatic variants, does
not make it harder to come up with different solutions to problems.
It rather seems that the lack of complexity that a simpler grammer
leads to makes it much easier to try out different solutions.



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