Python and Ruby

[Jonathan Gardner]

On Jan 31, 12:43 pm, Nobody <nob... at nowhere.com> wrote:
>
> If it was common-place to use Curried functions and partial application in
> Python, you'd probably prefer "f a b c" to "f(a)(b)(c)" as well.
>

That's just the point. It isn't common to play with curried functions
or monads or anything like that in computer science today. Yes,
Haskell exists, and is a great experiment in how such a language could
actually work. But at the same time, you have to have a brain the size
of the titanic to contain all the little details about the language
before you could write any large-scale application.

Meanwhile, Python's syntax and language is simple and clean, and
provides tremendous expressiveness without getting in the way of the
programmer.

Comparing Python's syntax to Haskell's syntax, Python is simpler.
Comparing what Python can do to what Haskell can do, Haskell is much
faster at certain tasks and allows the expression of certain things
that are difficult to express in Python. But at the end of the day,
the difference really doesn't matter that much.

Now, compare Python versus Language X along the same lines, and the
end result is that (a) Python is extraordinarily more simple than
Langauge X, and (b) Python is comparable in expressiveness to Language
X. That's the #1 reason why I like Python, and why saying Ruby and
Python are similar isn't correct.