Abelson and Python

[mensanator at aol.com]

bearophileH... at lycos.com wrote:
> mensanator at aol.com:
> > No surprise to anyone who's ever tried to use MIT Scheme.
>
> Be careful, such assertions are often flamebait.

Well, yeah, it's a warning to everyone to not
bother with the MIT implementation of Scheme which
is completely worthless.

>
> I am using DrPython

Haven't heard of that one, although I've got DrScheme.

> (I think they were using it at MIT too lately),

That's no surprise since the MIT implementation
of Scheme is worthless.

> and
> it is very very good IDE, it produces executables on the fly, it has a
> visual debugger with some nice graphical things, it manages graphics,
> and it has something that I have never seen in Python: it manages a
> hierarchy of simpler Scheme languages, useful to learn for students.
> Probably something similar may be useful to learn Python too (such
> stripped down Python versions can forbid things like  def foo(x=[]):
> ...).

I find that hierarchy extremely annoying. I don't see the need for it.
I never use OOP in Python yet there's no need for me to have a
stripped down version, I just don't use it.

> I am appreciating Scheme a bit because of such very good editor
> that makes things possible for newbies of the language too.

But those are implementation details, which you can't avoid.
A bad implementation spoils a language even if the language itself
is fabulous.

> 
> Bye,
> bearophile