Another newbie design question

[MartinRinehart at gmail.com]

Fortran (1957) had line comments. C (1972) replaced these with non-
nested block comments. C++ (1983) added here-to-EOL comments. Python
(1991) keeps here-to-EOL comments but replaces block comments with
multi-line quotes. Block comments and multi-line quotes both serve the
same purpose as doc comments. Block comments, especially if they nest,
are helpful for commenting out code. Multi-line quotes serve to add
text.

Is Python, in this particular, an advance over C++?

I wrote a lot of Java (here-to-EOL and block comments) without ever
feeling the need for multi-line quotes. I've written a little Perl and
found multi-line quotes useful for responding to -help switches. On
the other hand -help switches are very old-fashioned, a direction I'll
not be pointing my tiny beginner's language.

(A brief article on programming language geneology is at
http://www.MartinRinehart.com/articles/history-programming-languages.html
.)