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

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 9:34 PM, BartC <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:
> ... which even I could tell, from knowing what goes on behind the scenes,
> wasn't going to work well ...
> ...
>> 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.
>
>
> Someone could be interested in cars, mechanics and performance without
> wanting to know the most Pythonic way to get from Kings Cross to Heathrow.

But if I complain that the trek across four blocks of London cost me
ninety minutes and my train ticket (which I then had to get replaced),
you would blame it on me getting lost, rather than accepting my
assertion that London's slow to get around. And if you said "hey, take
a bus or a taxi next time", and I next time walked and got lost again,
you would rightly call me a fool. And if I then had the audacity to
say that London's streets are badly designed, because I looked at them
and even without knowing what sort of traffic goes on them, I can tell
that those are slow roads... you'd have very little respect for my
statements about London. It wouldn't matter if I'm the world's
greatest expert on hiking from Adelaide to Perth; it wouldn't matter
how many nuances of Nullarbor sand I'm familiar with, nor how best to
find drinking water there. I clearly know nothing about London, and my
complaints about the city should be taken with a grain of salt, until
such time as I put in the effort to get to know YOUR city YOUR way.

(Events depicted in this work are entirely fictional and have no basis
in reality. Really. Really truly. Anyway, I only got lost once.)

ChrisA