Python was designed (was Re: Multi-threading in Python vs Java)

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Oct 2013 09:37:58 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> This is design. Python has a king (Guido). It wasn't built by a
>> committee. Maybe you won't like some aspect of Python's design, but it
>> has one, it's not just sloppily slapped together.
>
>
> While I agree with your general thrust, I don't think it's quite so
> simple. Perl has a king, Larry Wall, but his design is more or less
> "throw everything into the pot, it'll be fine" and consequently Perl is,
> well, *weird*, with some pretty poor^W strange design decisions.

My apologies, I wasn't exactly clear. Having a king doesn't in any way
guarantee a clean design...

> Likewise Rasmus Lerdorf, king of PHP (at least initially), but he had no
> idea what he was doing:
>
> "I had no intention of writing a language. I didn't have a clue how to
> write a language. I didn't want to write a language," Lerdorf explained.
> "I just wanted to solve a problem of churning out Web applications very,
> very fast."

... yeah, what he said; but having no king pretty much condemns a
project to design-by-committee. Python has a king and a clear design.

In any case, we're broadly in agreement here. It's design that makes
Python good. That's why the PEP system and the interminable
bike-shedding on python-dev is so important... and why, at the end of
the day, the PEP's acceptance comes down to one person (Guido or a
BDFL-Delegate).

ChrisA