Why did no one invent Python before?
Colin J. Williams
cjw at sympatico.ca
Fri Jun 4 17:59:09 EDT 2004
Russell E. Owen wrote:
> In article <ec6dce8b.0406021449.6341a3fa at posting.google.com>,
> j_mckitrick at bigfoot.com (j_mckitrick) wrote:
>
>
>>Yes, it's a silly question, but given how far we have come, why is it
>>that a natural looking, easy to read, incredibly powerful language has
>>appeared only recently, from a tech standpoint?
>>
>>I can't *believe* how much more productive I am with the built in data
>>types and powerful expressions Python offers. It made me want to quit
>>my C++ job. Well, not quite. ;-)
>>
>>Seriously, why is a language like this only NOW appearing? And aside
>
>>from the interpreter, because while it is nice, it's not the main
>
>>forte' of the language, IMHO.
>
>
> I think smalltalk users would argue that it was done many years ago. It
> looks a bit odd at first to C programmers, but is easy to learn and has
> most of the strengths of python:
> - interpreted
> - automatic garbage collection
> - simple and clean
> - powerful
> - rich set of collection types
> - rich set of libraries
>
> There are a few important differences:
> - much worse for scripting
> - built in GUI
> - much better development environment; you really don't know what you're
> missing until you've used smalltalk's browsers, inspectors and
> debuggers. It's the main thing I really, really miss in python.
>
I don't know about smalltalk, but, for the Windows user, Boa Contructor
and PythonWin provide a good environment.
> I think lisp users would also argue for their language. It's really
> weird to non-lisp users (much more so than smalltalk is to C/python
> programmers) but really powerful.
>
> Anyway, I did not intend to detract from your praise of python. It is a
> wonderful language, and my main language right now.
>
> -- Russell
Colin W.
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