Are the critiques in "All the things I hate about Python" valid?

[Rhodri James]

On 20/02/18 17:11, Wild, Marcel, Prof <mwild at sun.ac.za> wrote:
> I scarcely know Python, and I have no intention delving into it further.
>   I was forced to use Python because it features binary decision diagrams, which MATHEMATICA doesn't. Coming from Mathematica the account of Nathan Murphy reads like a nightmare.
> 

I have to admit, I have no idea what you're talking about.  I suspect, 
though, that you would find a similar discussion of any other 
programming language at least as nightmarish.

> The one point that stroke me the most was the schism between Python 2 and 3. No such thing with Mathematica: All its 11 or more versions are fully compatible, I never experienced any problems in this regard.

The schism is not as wide as you are implying.  Aside from "print" 
becoming a function, which is blindingly obvious whenever you trip over 
it, there is relatively little reason why an ordinary Pythonista would 
care whether he or she was running Python 2 or Python 3.  Python 3.5 vs 
Python 3.7 is much more likely to be a relevant question, because of 
course Python has evolved new features over time.

The statement "all its [...] versions are fully compatible" implies 
Mathematica hasn't evolved over those versions.  I sincerely doubt that 
is true.

> Another point is the bad online help provided to "teach yourself" Python. For instance, it took me more than an hour to find out how to negate a Boolean variable, whereas in Mathematica you would just type "Negation" in the Wolfram Documentation search window, and get the information you need.

This is likely to be a personal thing.  Mathematica ties you firmly to 
its IDE; you get all the bells and whistles of that IDE, but only the 
bells and whistles of that IDE.  Python doesn't tie you to anything in 
particular, so you have to provide your own bells and whistles (but can 
provide any you can find or create).

That said, you are not making a good case for your research skills. 
Googling "python boolean negation" got me the information in under a 
minute, including the Firefox startup time.  Reading through the Boolean 
Expressions part of the online documentation at docs.python.com took 
little longer, though admittedly that isn't meant for beginners.  Even 
firing up a Python interpreter and typing

 >>> help("not")

didn't take that long (and honestly, "negation" is not the first word I 
think of when inverting booleans).

> 
> I know one pays for Mathematica whereas Python is open source, but I've come to realize now that this money is very well spent!
> 
> Question: Apart from a few commands not available in Mathematica, such as expr2bdd, is there really any domain of computation where Mathematica is inferior to Python?

Not knowing much about Mathematica, all I can say is "almost certainly."

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd