why isn't python more popular?

[Russell Wallace]

Kenn Barry wrote:
>         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.

Hmm, I'm as fluent in C as in English, and I have used awk - not
recently or extensively to be sure, but I found it easy enough.  I had a
go at Perl and I gave up - way, way too cryptic for my tastes.  Oh, it
wraps a lot of the C library functions, but the _language_ is completely
different.

>         Python is going down smooth. It _is_ very readable. The
> control structures are obvious.

Yep!

> 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?

I learned Python from the online docs in a few hours.

>         One thing that impressed me especially, was that Python
> includes list processing functions in a way that doesn't make me
> beat my head against a wall. I tried to teach myself Lisp many
> years ago. It may be better now, but back then Lisp was all CARs
> and CDRs and parens extending to infinity, and I couldn't make
> head or tail of it.

Yeah, I used to use Scheme (a Lisp dialect) for some stuff that I now
use Python for; does the same sort of things, at least that I want done,
but a lot more easily.

>         But Python doesn't force you to use lists, it just lets
> you use 'em, and the syntax is much cleaner. I ended up using
> list processing functions in my 1st Python program (a shell
> script of mine that I translated), and it was easy to do and to
> understand.
> 
>         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.

Yep!

-- 
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mailto:rwallace at esatclear.ie
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace