Python and the need for speed

[Ben Bacarisse]

Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> writes:

> On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 03:39 am, Paul Rubin wrote:
>
>> I still do my everyday stuff in Python and I'd like to get more
>> conversant with stuff like numpy, but it feels like an old-fashioned
>> language these days.
>
> "Old fashioned"? With await/async just added to the language, and type
> annotations? And comprehensions and iterators?
>
> Admittedly type annotations are mostly of interest to large projects with
> many developers and a huge code base. But the rest?
>
> Comprehensions may have been around for a decade or two in Haskell, but most
> older languages don't have them. I'm pretty sure Java doesn't. Does
> Javascript? Comprehensions feel like a fancy new language feature to
> me.

They've been in in Haskell for nearly three decades, but they were
around before that.  Miranda had them, as did Miranda's immediate
predecessor, KRC.  KRC dates from about 1980, so if you've been using
that lineage of languages, list comprehensions have been a standard
feature for 37 years.  I've been using them almost my entire programming
life.

It seems odd that ECMAScript (the JavaScript standard) does not have
them, but then JS seems to hide its function nature under an imperative
bushel.

Just another perspective...

<snip>
-- 
Ben.