The Cost of Dynamism (was Re: Pyhon 2.x or 3.x, which is faster?)

[Ben Finney]

Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> writes:

> On Mon, 21 Mar 2016 06:47 pm, Ben Finney wrote:
>
> > Bart can show good faith by *learning* idiomatic Python, with the
> > humility of a beginner. And also by refraining from rhetoric about
> > how bad Python's performance is, until he gains experience to make
> > those claims.
>
> "Humility of a beginner"... what a strange phrase to use about
> somebody who has been programming for decades.

What a strange reading of what I wrote. Clearly I'm referring to the
fact Bart is a beginner in Python.

To show good faith in learning Python – if indeed that is what Bart
wants, which I'm not convinced of given how much he prefers to talk
about a different private programming language instead – then he should
be taking advantage of the teaching resources that have been offered
numerous times.

> What exactly is the problem here? Is it that Bart hasn't earned the
> right to say what we all know, that Python is slow, because he's an
> outsider?

The problem is that Bart simultaneously is a beginner at Python, and
expresses astonishment that everyone shrugs when Bart's
dreadfully-written code performs so badly.

Good faith is contradicted by asserting knowledge of Python, complaining
about how some deliberately non-idiomatic Python code is performing
poorly, dismissing suggestions for improvement — specifically in the
context of someone who admittedly knows so little about Python.

-- 
 \       “… one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was |
  `\        that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful |
_o__)                  termination of their C programs.” —Robert Firth |
Ben Finney