Kay Schluehr wrote: > gsteff wrote: > > >>So I'm wondering, what is >>innovative about Python, either in its design or implementation? Or is >>its magic really just in combining many useful features of prior >>languages in an unusually pleasant way? >> >>Greg > > > The latter. > > http://www.python-in-business.org/ep2005/download.cpy?document=8599 > > As Guido described in his presentation Python is a decendent of ABC > developed at the university where he studied. > > Here is some material about the primary motivations of ABC: > > http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/abc/language.html > > Python seems to proof that eclecticism can be done right.
Python has as much resemblance to ABC as an airplane does to a car. The design principles used by ABC (like colons at the end of lines) may have a certain justification in the context of ABC, but you cannot simply transfer that justification to python. ABC is designed specifically and entirely to be beginner-friendly. Python is not. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
