why isn't python more popular?

[Aahz Maruch]

Hey, Kenn!  Welcome to the Python saloon!

In article <8n9a6m$5qb$1 at numbers.wetware.com>,
Kenn Barry <barry at wetware.com> wrote:
>In article <8n7128$h0i$1 at slb7.atl.mindspring.net>,
>Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>Unless those people have Perl as their *only* programming language, I
>>bet that most of them would find reading *other* people's Python
>>programs easier to read than other people's Perl programs, after only
>>one day of training in Python.
>
>	I'm inclined to disagree about Perl's readability for
>novices. When you are familiar with C and awk, Perl is fairly
>readable, even if you don't know the language. I am currently
>maintaining/rewriting some packages written with some Perl and
>some C. Twice now, problems arose in the (original, unmodified)
>Perl scripts. In both cases, I was able to find and fix the bugs,
>without knowing Perl at all. In one case it was a one-line
>correction; in the other, I was able to figure out what the
>(uncommented :-) code was supposed to be doing, and wrote a C
>program to replace it.
>
>	C and awk programmers, you see, are used to reading code
>that looks like line noise :-).

Mmmm, yeah, sort of.  But if you know only *one* of C/awk/sed, Perl is
non-trivial.  And I'm reasonably certain, because I was at one point an
almost-expert Perl programmer, that the Perl programs you're working
with are not making much use of Perl's even mildly esoteric features.

>	Python is going down smooth. It _is_ very readable. The
>control structures are obvious. Harder, for a C guy, is the data
>structures and their syntax, strings vs. lists vs. tuples vs.
>dictionaries, but it's not especially hard. Maybe two days of
>training instead of one, Aahz? Short days, with long lunch
>breaks?

No, I really think I can teach Python in one day to people who are
reasonably good C programmers.  I'm an efficient teacher; I frequently
do in a couple of hours what most people teach in a day.  I've got a
good knack (partly honed on years of Usenet experience ;-) for figuring
out what analogy will get through to people.

>	I think I'm going to stick with this Python language a
>while. I like languages that reward me with successes early in
>the learning process. It's a little wordier than a shell script
>for the same function, but a lot more readable and portable.

Exactly.  And if you want to do real programming, it grows along with
you.
--
                      --- Aahz (Copyright 2000 by aahz at pobox.com)

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