The "does Python have variables?" debate

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd like to argue that you're not using Fortran, then. You're making
>> use of it in the same way that I might make use of Ruby, PHP, and Perl
>> when I browse the web
>
> Yes one can argue so
> But one can also argue that this is a 1990s viewpoint
> http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html

Okay, so at what point do you stop using Fortran? Suppose the original
Fortran code was all compiled to binary years and years ago, and
nobody touches it. Nobody even knows that it was ever written in
Fortran; the existing binaries need no changes, or if they do, they
get edited directly in the binary. You're writing a Python program
that interacts with this. Sure, your success depends on someone, some
time in the past, having written Fortran (or FORTRAN) code, but you're
not yourself using that language at all.

Or can I put on my resume that I use, on a regular basis, FreeBSD,
OpenBSD, Mac OS, and Solaris, and I make extensive use of Hadoop,
map/reduce across petabytes of data, massively parallel processing,
and special relativity? I'm sure an employer would *love* to hear from
someone with all of that experience!

ChrisA