Writing more efficient code

[Jon Harrop]

bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> Jon Harrop:
>> I think most people could pick up the core ideas in a day and start
>> writing working programs.
> 
> Probably I am not that intelligent, I probably need some months :-) But
> that language has many good sides, and one day I'll probably try to
> learn it a bit.

It is very cool, and there are a growing number of resources about these
languages. You might also like to try Microsoft's F#, which runs
under .NET.

>> Mathematica is expensive but learning to use pattern matching is much
>> easier than learning how to write a pattern matcher and much less tedious
>> than reimplementing it yourself all the time (which is exactly what the
>> OP will end up doing).
> 
> I see. This is a very old post of mine, at the bottom there are few
> notes about the Mathematica pattern matching syntax:
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/93ce3e9a08f5e4c7

Yes. Lots of good points. I think this sort of functionality would be a
welcome addition to Python. What is the easiest way to add such
functionality to Python? Perhaps it can be written in Python?

> To avoid reimplementing it yourself all the time then maybe someone
> (you?) can try to write a good pattern matcher for sequences for
> CPython. With such system it may become less important to switch to a
> different language ;-)

I think that is an excellent idea. Who will pay me? ;-)

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/index.html?usenet