Python handles globals badly.

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Mario Figueiredo <marfig at gmx.com> wrote:
> I can't stand Java. I just don't think calling it a mistake. It's worth has
> been proven by its level of adoption and by the usable software that has
> been made with it. Javascript/ECMAScript is criticized by so many and yet
> there's no denying of its importance. Even today we struggle to find a
> better alternative to client-side scripting.

Yeah, the reason for that is simple: anything else adds (sometimes
massive) overhead. Would you suggest creating a client/server
architecture, a RESTful API, and a triple-redundant HTTPS+SSL+Blowfish
security system, to enumerate files on your hard drive? No, you'd just
use ls(1). In the same way, there's not a lot of point downloading
megs and megs of PyPyJS engine before running a single line of code,
when you could skip that and just write in JS. Before Python can be "a
better alternative", it has to overcome this massive hump.

If Python 3.x were as well supported by web browsers as ECMAScript 5.x
is, I think we'd see a dramatic shift in usage. But it ain't, so we
won't.

ChrisA