Python ORMs Supporting POPOs and Substituting Layers in Django

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Lie Ryan <lie.1296 at gmail.com> wrote:
> IMO, Python has a much nicer choice of built-in data structure for data
> processing. Python has a much more mature object-orientation, e.g. I prefer
> writing l.append(x) rather than array_push(l, x). I think these qualities
> are what makes you think Python is much, much more suitable for data
> processing than PHP; and I wholesomely agree.
>

Two more examples where Python's lists are superior to PHP's arrays.
Array literal syntax feels like a function call, but list literals are
slim and easy to use inside expressions (try creating a nested array
as a function argument - you'll get a forest of parens). Also,
dereferencing an array only works on an array variable - if you have a
function that returns an array, you can't dereference it directly:

$foo = func()[1];   # doesn't work
$foo = func(); $foo=$foo[1];  # works

I much prefer the "everything's an object" notion. C's array literals
are just as weird (although in C, you can directly dereference a
literal character array - "ABCDEFG"[note_idx] will give you a note
name as a char)... much easier when a variable name is just an
expression, a function call is an expression, a literal is an
expression, and you can work with them all the same way.

ChrisA