[Baypiggies] Eric Raymond likes Python

[Delbert Franz]

On Sunday 06 September 2009, wesley chun wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Rami Chowdhury<rami.chowdhury at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have a fondness for that article, it's one of the things that persuaded me
> > to try learning Python :-)
> >
> > On Sep 6, 2009, at 12:21 , Aahz wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, Sep 06, 2009, jim wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Here's a good overview Eric Raymond wrote of his experience in
> >>> learning Python
> >>>
> >>> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882
> >>
> >> Although that's good, it's also nearly a decade old....  ;-)
> 
> 
> aahz is right. in fact, this is one of the most highly-read articles
> in LJ history. i don't have the number to back it up, but it has yet
> to leave the "most popular articles" section on the front page. i have
> never ever *not* seen it there. he is one of the biggest names in open
> source, and it's great to read such a candidly-written piece that
> highlights the strengths of Python.
> 
> as an aside, here's the antithesis blog post:
> http://bitcheese.net/wiki/nopython
> 
> comments on *that* one? (many already know that the 1.10000000000001
> display issue is taken care of by Python 3.1.)
> 
> -- wesley
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The complaint about 1.1 printing as 1.10...01, is just plain lame! 
When I ask for a variable to be printed without a format given, 
I want all of what the variable contains.  The protester needs a 
simple lesson in floating point arithmetic.  Of course too many 
people in software know practically nothing of floating point and
expect the computer to behave like the "real number" system.
Simple answer: it does not and never will:)  Get a life and 
print with a format that cuts off the unavoidable floating-point
noise!  If it helps any, gfortran does the same thing and I suspect
any other Fortran implementation worth anything would do the same thing. 
I suspect many developers were never taught much about floating point or if they
were, they have forgotten about it.  Being a "number cruncher" requires
a nearly constant awareness of the various pitfalls of ignoring the 
differences between floating-point arithmetic and real-number 
system arithmetic.

                             Delbert