subject:"Why did Quora choose Python for its development\?"

Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com writes:

 Python books than after six months of trying to understand PERL... And

Perl is the language, and perl is what runs Perl.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Thorsten Kampe thors...@thorstenkampe.de writes:

 * Chris Angelico (Wed, 25 May 2011 08:01:38 +1000)
 
 On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:39 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net wrote:
  One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is 
 I
  refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
  snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
  this does.'
 
 Yes, I believe that was Perl. And an amusing quote. But most of the
 point of it comes from the fact that Perl uses punctuation for most of
 its keywords, whereas (say) Python uses English words; it's a lot more
 fun to crunch something down when you can use $| and friends than when
 you have to put x and y, complete with spaces, for a simple boolean.
 But that says nothing about which language is actually better for
 working with... [...]

 It does say something about readibility. And yes, readability counts. 
 And yes, readability says a lot about how good a language is for reading 
 and working with.

To people used to the latin alphabet languages using a different script
are unreadable. So readability has a lot to do with what one is used
to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
Perl and moving on?

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Roy Smith

In article mailman.2069.1306324514.9059.python-l...@python.org,
 Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote:
  Remembering that I, J, K, L, M, and N were integer was trivial if you
  came from a math background.  And, of course, Fortran was all about
  math, so that was natural.  Those letters are commonly used for integers
  in formulae.  If I write $ x sub i $, anybody who knows math would
  immediately assume that the range of x was reals and the range of i was
  integers.
 
 When I studied maths, x and y were reals, and i wasn't. But it wasn't
 integer either... :)

I was talking of i in the context of a variable, not as a constant.  If 
I write $ 3 + 7i $ in one place and $ x sub i $ in another, most people 
will figure out from the context which is which.
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread D'Arcy J.M. Cain

On Wed, 25 May 2011 07:36:40 -0400
Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote:
 Remembering that I, J, K, L, M, and N were integer was trivial if you 
 came from a math background.  And, of course, Fortran was all about 

The easiest way to remember was that the first two letters of INteger
gave you the range.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/|  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082)(eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Chris Angelico

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 12:23 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net wrote:
 The easiest way to remember was that the first two letters of INteger
 gave you the range.


G for Green and R for Right, which are the first two letters of Green.

(I wonder how many Pythonistas are familiar with that?)

Chris Angelico
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, 25 May 2011 10:23:59 -0400, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

 On Wed, 25 May 2011 07:36:40 -0400
 Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote:
 Remembering that I, J, K, L, M, and N were integer was trivial if you
 came from a math background.  And, of course, Fortran was all about
 
 The easiest way to remember was that the first two letters of INteger
 gave you the range.

Huh. I never knew that. I just learned from use that I, J, K, M and N 
were traditionally integers. I never used L for an integer variable, and 
don't know anyone who does.

I for integer is obvious. If you need a second one, you use the next 
letter J, and if you need a third, the one after that, K. If you need 
four, you're probably doing something wrong.

Likewise, N for number (as in, *counting* number). If you need two, using 
N and O is stupid, because O can be confused with 0, so you go backwards 
and use M.

However, using P and Q for integers is merely arbitrary convention.



-- 
Steven
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Matty Sarro

I hate using L for anything, namely because if you type it lowercase
you always have to wonder if its an l or a 1 in a terminal window.
-Matthew

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote:
 On Wed, 25 May 2011 10:23:59 -0400, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

 On Wed, 25 May 2011 07:36:40 -0400
 Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote:
 Remembering that I, J, K, L, M, and N were integer was trivial if you
 came from a math background.  And, of course, Fortran was all about

 The easiest way to remember was that the first two letters of INteger
 gave you the range.

 Huh. I never knew that. I just learned from use that I, J, K, M and N
 were traditionally integers. I never used L for an integer variable, and
 don't know anyone who does.

 I for integer is obvious. If you need a second one, you use the next
 letter J, and if you need a third, the one after that, K. If you need
 four, you're probably doing something wrong.

 Likewise, N for number (as in, *counting* number). If you need two, using
 N and O is stupid, because O can be confused with 0, so you go backwards
 and use M.

 However, using P and Q for integers is merely arbitrary convention.



 --
 Steven
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Terry Reedy


On 5/25/2011 8:01 AM, John Bokma wrote:


to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
Perl and moving on?


[you meant 'than Perl'] You are one of the people whose brain fits Perl 
(or vice versa) better than most. So enjoy it. Ignore anyone who says 
otherwise.


--
Terry Jan Reedy

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Ethan Furman


Terry Reedy wrote:

On 5/25/2011 8:01 AM, John Bokma wrote:


to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
Perl and moving on?


[you meant 'than Perl'] You are one of the people whose brain fits Perl 
(or vice versa) better than most. So enjoy it. Ignore anyone who says 
otherwise.


+1

If everybody's brain worked the same, we wouldn't have so many different 
languages to choose from.


~Ethan~
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Ethan Furman et...@stoneleaf.us writes:

 Terry Reedy wrote:
 On 5/25/2011 8:01 AM, John Bokma wrote:

 to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
 than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
 Perl and moving on?

 [you meant 'than Perl'] You are one of the people whose brain fits
 Perl (or vice versa) better than most. So enjoy it. Ignore anyone
 who says otherwise.

 +1

 If everybody's brain worked the same, we wouldn't have so many
 different languages to choose from.

So, this means that in general language readability is not as clear cut
as some seem to advertise ;-).

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Matty Sarro

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:14 PM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Ethan Furman et...@stoneleaf.us writes:

 Terry Reedy wrote:
 On 5/25/2011 8:01 AM, John Bokma wrote:

 to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
 than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
 Perl and moving on?

 [you meant 'than Perl'] You are one of the people whose brain fits
 Perl (or vice versa) better than most. So enjoy it. Ignore anyone
 who says otherwise.

 +1

 If everybody's brain worked the same, we wouldn't have so many
 different languages to choose from.

 So, this means that in general language readability is not as clear cut
 as some seem to advertise ;-).

 --
 John Bokma                                                               j3b

 Blog: http://johnbokma.com/        Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
 Perl for books:    http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
 --
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General readability is a farce. If it was true we would only have one
section to the library. Different people enjoy reading, and can
comprehend better in different ways. THat's why some people are super
verbose - hell, just look at this here post! :)
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread theg...@nospam.net


On 5/24/2011 1:39 PM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:
[snip]

One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is I
refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
this does.'

I dunno. That sounds about like how most programming course
exams are written, no?
The point is that puzzling through arcane bits of code are crucial to 
learning

any language. It's a valuable exercise.

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, 25 May 2011 07:01:07 -0500, John Bokma wrote:

 if Python is really so much better than Python [Perl] 
 readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
 Perl and moving on?

My guess is that you have an adversarial view of computer languages, 
therefore after investing so much time and energy and, most importantly, 
self-image into becoming a Perl programmer, dropping it and moving on 
would be tantamount to admitting to yourself that you were wrong to 
have wasted so many years on the wrong language.

Whether it is objectively wrong or not rarely enters into these things.

That *you personally* can't or won't let go of Perl says nothing about 
the relative readability of Perl and Python code.


-- 
Steven
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, 25 May 2011 08:01:38 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

 On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:39 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net
 wrote:

 When I first looked at Perl it looked like line noise.  When I first
 looked at Python it looked like pseudo-code.
 
 When I first looked at assembly language it looked like random junk left
 behind in memory. When I first looked at COBOL it looked like ... COBOL.
 Doesn't make either of them better or worse.

Er, yes it does.

Writing code is primarily for *human readers*. Once you've compiled the 
code once, the computer never need look at it again, but human being come 
back to read it over and over again, to learn from it, or for 
maintenance. We rightfully value our own time and convenience as more 
valuable than that of the computer's, which is why we use programming 
languages at all, instead of having custom-made hardware built for every 
task we want the computer to do: 

I have to rename a file before August 2015, but the rename itself needs 
to be done in under a picosecond. Know any bespoke chip manufacturers who 
do small runs?

From that perspective, COBOL is an improvement on assembly, which is why 
there are probably still more COBOL programmers around than people who 
work exclusively on assembly.

Sometimes we compromise, or even subvert, that trade-off: for speed 
critical code where we do care more about the computer's time than our 
own, or for esoteric languages designed to be as hard to read as 
possible. My personal favourites, Oook and Whitespace.

But generally, people spend more time reading code than writing it, 
therefore we should weigh ease of reading higher than ease of 
writing. (My guess is, the weights should be about 5:1.)


 Pseudo-code is not a viable language for a computer to parse, 

Only because pseudo-code implies that the code is ambiguous or 
otherwise cannot be parsed. If it could be, it wouldn't be *pseudo*, it 
would be real code (possibly for some compiler that hasn't been written 
yet).


 but it's a
 good language for scribbling down comments in. That doesn't necessarily
 mean that a programming language that's closer to pseudo-code is good.

That depends on the nature of pseudo-code. Pseudo-assembly has all the 
disadvantages of assembly with none of the advantages, i.e. it doesn't 
actually work. So in that sense, pseudo-code is not necessarily a good 
thing nor a bad thing.

But in general conversation, pseudo-code is usually implied to mean that 
the language is as close to human language as you can make it, while 
still be parsable by a compiler.


 And verbosity doesn't necessarily equate to quality; for instance, when
 I'm working in both Python and PHP, I find it FAR tidier to use Python's
 {1:2,3:4] notation than PHP's array(1=2,3=4) - but on the flip side, I
 would prefer to have program structure defined by keywords like if and
 while than obscure random line noise. (Fortunately, most sane
 languages do indeed use keywords there.)

True. That's one of the limitations of the xtalk family of languages 
derived from Apple's (defunct) Hypertalk: it's awfully verbose, which is 
good for newbies but not quite so good for experts.



-- 
Steven
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, 25 May 2011 17:30:48 -0400, theg...@nospam.net wrote:

 On 5/24/2011 1:39 PM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote: [snip]
 One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is I
 refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
 snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
 this does.'
 I dunno. That sounds about like how most programming course exams are
 written, no?
 The point is that puzzling through arcane bits of code are crucial to
 learning
 any language. It's a valuable exercise.

You seem to miss the point that a good language shouldn't make it 
possible to write arcane code that needs to be puzzled out.

Although in fairness, what's arcane to me might be straightforward to 
you... and vice versa.

In that sense, there probably aren't any good languages, because it is 
impractical to have a language that cannot be obfuscated in any way. 
Nevertheless, we can distinguish less good from more good in 
languages in the sense of readability.  The fact that some languages not 
just allow such obfuscation but encourage it makes the language great for 
puzzles but not so good for when you actually want to get work done and 
have to deal with code written by someone else. *Especially* if they're 
significantly smarter, or dumber, than you.

Worst of all is dealing with code written by somebody who *thinks* 
they're smarter but is actually dumber.



-- 
Steven
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread RainyDay

On May 25, 3:14 pm, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Ethan Furman et...@stoneleaf.us writes:
  Terry Reedy wrote:
  On 5/25/2011 8:01 AM, John Bokma wrote:

  to. Like I already stated before: if Python is really so much better
  than Python readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
  Perl and moving on?

  [you meant 'than Perl'] You are one of the people whose brain fits
  Perl (or vice versa) better than most. So enjoy it. Ignore anyone
  who says otherwise.

  +1

  If everybody's brain worked the same, we wouldn't have so many
  different languages to choose from.

 So, this means that in general language readability is not as clear cut
 as some seem to advertise ;-).


I only know a tiny bit of Perl but I think you may
prefer it because it gives you some advantages in
short term but you have to pay more than it's
worth (arguably) in the long term. When you sit
down to write a new program, it's easier to do
than in python because it's quicker to type and,
of the proverbial many ways, you chose the ones
that suit your taste better.

However, when you sit down to read someone else's
code, it's harder to read because you don't know
the intent of their authors. If they had different
taste for idioms or formatting style than you do,
you will chalk it up to them being bad programmers
and having bad coding or formatting style, so it's
not perceived as a perl's failing.

Python way has more of an emphasis on everyone
agreeing on some preferred, standard idioms so
that everyone can pick up each others' code
quickly.

Similarly, when we write in english, we have
conventions of, for instance, capitalizing at the
start of a sentence and having a period at the end
of it, and following rules of grammar. However, if
I'm writing notes for my own use, I might write:

similarly when we write in english we have
conventions of eg capitalizing at start of
sentence and having period at the end 
following rules of grammar   but since i'm
writing for my own use maybe it's easier to
write in lower caps and use 3 spaces at the
end of sentences, since no-ones has to read
it but me?

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info writes:

 On Wed, 25 May 2011 07:01:07 -0500, John Bokma wrote:

 if Python is really so much better than Python [Perl] 
 readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
 Perl and moving on?

 My guess is that you have an adversarial view of computer languages, 

Well, it's clear that you are indeed the fuckwit I suspected you
are. What's a pity is that you are so vocal in this group and to me at
least makes it a way less pleasant experience to read this group.

Get a life. Or better, just fuck off and die. It will improve both the
world and the Python community, of which you are nothing but a little,
smelly shitstain.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-25 Thread Ben Finney


 Get a life. Or better, just fuck off and die. It will improve both the
 world and the Python community, of which you are nothing but a little,
 smelly shitstain.

That abuse is entirely unwelcome in this community, against any person.
Please desist.

If you find any contributing members so difficult to deal with, please
don't respond at all.

-- 
 \   “We have met the enemy and he is us.” —Walt Kelly, _Pogo_ |
  `\1971-04-22 |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Ulrich Eckhardt ulrich.eckha...@dominolaser.com
Ahem, is this Java the language that a certain, well-known service 
provider

is getting screwed over hard currently, because they forgot to read the
fineprint in the declaration of freedom? And this Objective C, isn't this
the language that GCC had support for since before it properly supported
C++, and that on a multitude of targets?



Someone also said that C# can be used under Mono and even though this is 
true, C# still remains a proprietary language that can be totally changed if 
MS wants that, as well as Objective C can be changed if Apple wants that.
So what matters is if the most important developers for a specific 
language/platform are releasing the code as open source or they keep it 
proprietary and I don't see a big number of programmers developing code in 
C# and Objective C.


About Java... you may be right. :-)

Octavian




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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com 
wrote:

From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
Aha, so with other words that ORM doesn't have that feature.
DBIX::Class also use the DateTime module, but it can use it directly,
without needing to write more code for that, and it can also return
localized dates.

Once again. ORMs return _python builtin type_. Localization is not
their responsibility, and plugging it there is code bloat, rather than
feature. Sure you may ask ORM to handle JSONRPC requests on its own,
but ORM responsibility is to map RDBMS features to language objects.

Who said that? The ORM responsability is to map RDBMS to the objects you 
need, not to the language objects.
If the ORM can do that directly by just adding a configuration instead of 
needing to manually use of other modules, why is this bloat? You add that 
configuration only if you need it, not always, and it is much more simple.

All good python packages limit their functionality to specific field,
so you could choose one you prefer for each different task
independently.

All the Perl modules do the same, but some of the Perl modules accept 
plugins that make easier the collaboration of different modules which are 
needed often, and the need of localizing the date is a feature used often.

without needing to load the DateTime module manually and to initialize 
the DateTime object manually...

This is basically stating that you didn't read the code I posted.
Where did you ever find initialize the DateTime object manually?
Sorry, but its pointless to discuss anything if you don't want to even
read properly examples you receive.

You told that you need to use another module for localizing the date because 
the ORM returns just a language date object that doesn't do that.

Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com

Moreover, you are comparing apples to oranges here, and then
complaining that apples somehow turned out to be not oranges.
If we take python way of defining dicts and check it in perl, we find
that it is not supported, so obviously perl is non-intuitive and does
not support clear and easy way of defining hashes from list of
key-value pairs:
@l = ([1, 2], [3, 4],);
%d = @l;
for $k ( keys %d ) { print $k\n; }

which outputs single ARRAY(0x804e158) instead of proper 1, 3, as it
does in python:


dict([[1,2], [3,4]]).keys()

[1, 3]

This is yet another example that you are just trolling here, making
silly and unbacked claims, and ignoring any valid arguments you
receive.



You are showing a code but tell another thing. If it would be as you said, I 
should have said that if in Perl a dictionary is made from a list using

%d = @l;

then in Python it should be
l = d

because it would be more nice. But I didn't say that. I said that it would 
be nice to be able to use something like

d = dict(l)

using the Python dict statement for creating dicts.

And OK, Python needs another pair of brackets for doing that and this is no 
problem, but the result is that the Python's syntax is not as shorter and 
nice as Perl's, for the same thing.

This is what that I said.

And you are telling that in Perl should be used an even more complicated and 
ugly syntax just for beeing the same as in Python just for showing that I am 
wrong, but I was comparing just the shortness and cleraness of the code.


So, again, in Perl is just:

%d = @l;

Please tell me if Python has a syntax which is more clear than this for 
doing this thing.

It doesn't matter if it is different or if it follows another syntax.

And again, I am not trolling anything. I am just defending a language which 
has a clearer syntax for doing some things, and a shorter code for other 
things, and which uses less braces and brackets than Python for other 
things, and which has a single-recommended way for doing some things, even 
though other list members were trolling about Perl, but nobody said 
something against.


Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-24 Thread Stefan Behnel


Beliavsky, 20.05.2011 18:39:

I thought this essay on why one startup chose Python was interesting.


Since everyone seems to be hot flaming at their pet languages in this 
thread, let me quickly say this:


Thanks for sharing the link.

Stefan

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Stefan Behnel stefan...@behnel.de

Beliavsky, 20.05.2011 18:39:

I thought this essay on why one startup chose Python was interesting.


Since everyone seems to be hot flaming at their pet languages in this 
thread, let me quickly say this:


Thanks for sharing the link.



Maybe I have missed a message, but if I didn't, please provide that link.
I am always interested to find the best solutions.

Thanks.

Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 From: Stefan Behnel stefan...@behnel.de

 Beliavsky, 20.05.2011 18:39:

 I thought this essay on why one startup chose Python was interesting.

 Since everyone seems to be hot flaming at their pet languages in this
 thread, let me quickly say this:

 Thanks for sharing the link.


 Maybe I have missed a message, but if I didn't, please provide that link.
 I am always interested to find the best solutions.

At the beginning of the thread, three days and forty-odd messages ago,
this was posted:

http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-choose-Python-for-its-development

It's the reason for the thread title, regardless of the current thread
content :)

Chris Angelico
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-24 Thread Daniel Kluev

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 And you are telling that in Perl should be used an even more complicated and
 ugly syntax just for beeing the same as in Python just for showing that I am
 wrong, but I was comparing just the shortness and cleraness of the code.

 So, again, in Perl is just:

 %d = @l;

Once again. Suppose we have array of key-value pairs (two-dimensional
array), `l`. In python, converting it to dict is as simple as d =
dict(l). In perl, %d = @l; produces meaningless value. Following your
logic, this means that perl has ugly syntax.

-- 
With best regards,
Daniel Kluev
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Tue, 24 May 2011 09:00:14 +0300
Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 So, again, in Perl is just:
 
 %d = @l;
 
 Please tell me if Python has a syntax which is more clear than this for 
 doing this thing.

How is that clear?  Shorter != clearer.  A Python programmer
looking at that sees line noise.  A Perl programmer looking at d = dict
([a]) (or even d = dict(a,)) sees something that has something to do
with creating a dictionary.  At least he would know in which section of
the manual to look for more information.

 And again, I am not trolling anything. I am just defending a language which 
 has a clearer syntax for doing some things, and a shorter code for other 

Are Perl programmers aware of some imminent worldwide shortage of
electrons that Python programmers are not?  Why is there this obsession
with shortness?

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/|  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082)(eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Tue, 24 May 2011 00:17:55 -0500
John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
  $d = @a;
 
 That will give you the number of elements in @a. What you (probably)
 mean is %hash = @array;

If I was even considering using Perl, this one exchange would send me
screaming in the opposite direction.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/|  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082)(eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-24 Thread Teemu Likonen

* 2011-05-24T06:05:35-04:00 * D'Arcy J. M. Cain wrote:

 On Tue, 24 May 2011 09:00:14 +0300
 Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 %d = @l;
 
 Please tell me if Python has a syntax which is more clear than this
 for doing this thing.

 How is that clear? Shorter != clearer. A Python programmer looking
 at that sees line noise.

I'm a Lisp programmer who sees (some) Python code as line noise.

 I am just defending a language which has a clearer syntax for doing
 some things, and a shorter code for other

 Are Perl programmers aware of some imminent worldwide shortage of
 electrons that Python programmers are not? Why is there this obsession
 with shortness?

I don't know but from the point of view of a Lisp programmer Python has
the same obsession. Not trolling, I just wanted to point out that these
are just point of views. I don't actually care that much about these
things.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-24 Thread Kevin Walzer


On 5/22/11 3:44 AM, Octavian Rasnita wrote:

Somebody told that C# and Objective C are good languages. They might be good, 
but they are proprietary, and not only that they are proprietary, but they need 
to be ran under platforms that cannot be used freely, so from the freedom point 
of view, Perl, Ruby, Python and Java are the ways to go.


Proprietary?

Licensing options for C# in its Mono (Free Platform) implementation:

http://www.mono-project.com/Licensing

Licensing options for Objective-C in its GNUStep (Free Platform) 
implementaiton


http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html

It may be true that these languages are more widely used on their 
originating platforms (Windows, OS X) than on Linux, but these 
implementations are definitely open source.


--Kevin

--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:09 AM, Kevin Walzer k...@codebykevin.com wrote:
 Proprietary?

 Licensing options for C# in its Mono (Free Platform) implementation:

 http://www.mono-project.com/Licensing

 Licensing options for Objective-C in its GNUStep (Free Platform)
 implementaiton

 http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html

Just a side point: Are these *languages* free, or merely these
*implementations*?

Chris Angelico
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-24 Thread Kevin Walzer


On 5/24/11 2:23 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:

Beliavsky, 20.05.2011 18:39:

I thought this essay on why one startup chose Python was interesting.


Since everyone seems to be hot flaming at their pet languages in this
thread, let me quickly say this:

Thanks for sharing the link.

Stefan



I kind of thought that other posters might also chime in on why they 
chose Python instead of insert other language here. Since no one else 
has, I'll bite.


I've been programming for about seven years, and am basically 
self-taught. I got my first taste of writing code when trying do to some 
basic hacking on my (then) shiny new G3 iBook. (Even though it was a 
Mac, I was enthralled by its Unix underpinnings.) C was too hard for a 
programming newbie, and (at the time) I only understood shell to be a 
sequential series of commands. (cd ~/.Trash; ls; rm *)


My goal was to write desktop GUI apps, and looking around at the 
available languages, libraries, and toolkits for Unix and the Mac, I 
settled on Tk as the UI toolkit, since it seemed to be the simplest one 
out there, and on Tcl and Python as the programming languages. (A brief 
detour with AppleScript convinced me that it is a useful scripting 
language for hooking into various parts of OS X, but it is not very 
powerful.)


While Tcl doesn't get a lot of love or respect on this list, it is quite 
powerful in its way, and an understanding of Tcl is quite useful in 
particular for understanding Tk and its Python wrapper, Tkinter. After 
becoming productive with Tcl and writing a couple of applications in it, 
I turned to Python in earnest and set about learning its capabilities as 
well, and have since released a couple of Python desktop apps on the Mac 
(commercial apps, using Tk as the toolkit).


With that background, here are my reasons for keeping Python in my toolbox:

1. Its core libraries and third-party packages address nearly every 
imaginable need. The size of its community is a real asset here. Tcl is 
a more compact language, with a smaller core library and fewer 
third-party packages (no library comparable to Mark Pilgrim's 
feedparser, for instance), which means that for some use cases, using 
Tcl would mean more work.


2. Python has excellent tools for deployment of desktop apps. Since I 
only work on the Mac, I'm not that familiar with py2exe, but py2app and 
bundlebuilder have always allowed me to wrap up my apps with an embedded 
Python interpreter with a minimum of fuss. Tcl also excels in deployment 
of desktop apps; other languages, such as Perl and Ruby, seem to lag 
behind in this respect. (I could find no actively-maintained, 
open-source, Mac-viable desktop app bundling tools for either Ruby or 
Perl, which cooled my interest in them considerably.)


3. Python's binding to Tk makes writing GUI apps a straightforward 
process. Since I already knew Tk quite well, learning its Python 
bindings was much simpler than learning another GUI toolkit such as PyQt 
or wxPython. The strategies I learned from Tcl to develop sophisticated 
Tk-based UI's translate quite well to Python.


Python isn't perfect; for some instances, I find Tcl a more lightweight 
and accessible tool to use. I also spend a lot of time digging into Tcl 
and Tk's C API to extend their capabilities in certain ways; this also 
allows my Python apps to access such enhancements, via Tkinter. But all 
in all I'm a happy user of Python, and it will continue to have a 
primary place in my toolbox.


--Kevin

--
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net
 On Tue, 24 May 2011 09:00:14 +0300
 Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 So, again, in Perl is just:
 
 %d = @l;
 
 Please tell me if Python has a syntax which is more clear than this for 
 doing this thing.
 
 How is that clear?  Shorter != clearer.  A Python programmer
 looking at that sees line noise.  A Perl programmer looking at d = dict
 ([a]) (or even d = dict(a,)) sees something that has something to do
 with creating a dictionary.  At least he would know in which section of
 the manual to look for more information.


The Perl programmers usually don't need to look in the dictionary when they are 
creating programs.
Perl is harder to learn, but it is easier to use.

 Are Perl programmers aware of some imminent worldwide shortage of
 electrons that Python programmers are not?  Why is there this obsession
 with shortness?


A shorter code can be typed faster, obviously, and there are fewer possibility 
of appearing errors, but the shortage is not the most important thing.

The most important thing is that the chars @, $, or % are the same in all 
languages, while the English words used by the languages that use many such 
words are harder to remember especially for the non-native English speakers. 
Python is not a very bad language from this perspective like Java is though. :-)

In Perl the programmers can also use English words for some things, like 
$OUTPUT_AUTOFLUSH, but personally I never liked those things. Using $| instead 
is much shorter and clear, because I don't need to remember the English words 
like autoflush, or maybe it was just flush, or it was autoflush_output, or 
output_flush... something like $| can't be forgotten.

Yes, I know that the guys from Google would never like that since these chars 
are not Googleable :-)

Octavian

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net

 On Tue, 24 May 2011 00:17:55 -0500
 John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
  $d = @a;
 
 That will give you the number of elements in @a. What you (probably)
 mean is %hash = @array;
 
 If I was even considering using Perl, this one exchange would send me
 screaming in the opposite direction.


If you didn't consider to change the language you prefer it means that you are 
closed minded and use to fell in love with the tools you use.
Don't make me tell here how many things I don't like in Perl.
I use to tell those things on Perl mailing lists and make upset their members. 
:-)

Similarly, if you don't like something in Perl, why don't you tell them what 
you don't like to the Perl programmers community and not just have the guts to 
tell that in a group where the majority share your preferences.
I came here on the list to find good things about Python and to learn some 
things and use its good parts, and not to hear bashing about other programming 
languages.

Octavian

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
 On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 And you are telling that in Perl should be used an even more complicated and
 ugly syntax just for beeing the same as in Python just for showing that I am
 wrong, but I was comparing just the shortness and cleraness of the code.

 So, again, in Perl is just:

 %d = @l;
 
 Once again. Suppose we have array of key-value pairs (two-dimensional
 array),

This is a forced example to fit the way Python can do it with a clean syntax, 
but I don't think there are cases in which somebody wants to create 
hashes/dictionaries where the key is not a plain string but an array.

This is not a rare case, but a case that probably nobody needs, ever.

Octavian

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: Kevin Walzer k...@codebykevin.com

 On 5/22/11 3:44 AM, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 Somebody told that C# and Objective C are good languages. They might be 
 good, but they are proprietary, and not only that they are proprietary, but 
 they need to be ran under platforms that cannot be used freely, so from the 
 freedom point of view, Perl, Ruby, Python and Java are the ways to go.
 
 Proprietary?
 
 Licensing options for C# in its Mono (Free Platform) implementation:
 
 http://www.mono-project.com/Licensing
 
 Licensing options for Objective-C in its GNUStep (Free Platform) 
 implementaiton
 
 http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.html
 
 It may be true that these languages are more widely used on their 
 originating platforms (Windows, OS X) than on Linux, but these 
 implementations are definitely open source.


Exactly, this is why I said that it matters only the distributions used by the 
most users.

Octavian


-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Subject: Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?
 I've been programming for about seven years, and am basically 
 self-taught. I got my first taste of writing code when trying do to some 
 basic hacking on my (then) shiny new G3 iBook. (Even though it was a 
 Mac, I was enthralled by its Unix underpinnings.) C was too hard for a 
 programming newbie, and (at the time) I only understood shell to be a 
 sequential series of commands. (cd ~/.Trash; ls; rm *)
 
 My goal was to write desktop GUI apps, and looking around at the 
 available languages, libraries, and toolkits for Unix and the Mac, I 
 settled on Tk as the UI toolkit, since it seemed to be the simplest one 
 out there, and on Tcl and Python as the programming languages. (A brief 
 detour with AppleScript convinced me that it is a useful scripting 
 language for hooking into various parts of OS X, but it is not very 
 powerful.)
 
 While Tcl doesn't get a lot of love or respect on this list, it is quite 
 powerful in its way, and an understanding of Tcl is quite useful in 
 particular for understanding Tk and its Python wrapper, Tkinter. After 
 becoming productive with Tcl and writing a couple of applications in it, 
 I turned to Python in earnest and set about learning its capabilities as 
 well, and have since released a couple of Python desktop apps on the Mac 
 (commercial apps, using Tk as the toolkit).
 
 With that background, here are my reasons for keeping Python in my toolbox:
 
 1. Its core libraries and third-party packages address nearly every 
 imaginable need. The size of its community is a real asset here. Tcl is 
 a more compact language, with a smaller core library and fewer 
 third-party packages (no library comparable to Mark Pilgrim's 
 feedparser, for instance), which means that for some use cases, using 
 Tcl would mean more work.
 
 2. Python has excellent tools for deployment of desktop apps. Since I 
 only work on the Mac, I'm not that familiar with py2exe, but py2app and 
 bundlebuilder have always allowed me to wrap up my apps with an embedded 
 Python interpreter with a minimum of fuss. Tcl also excels in deployment 
 of desktop apps; other languages, such as Perl and Ruby, seem to lag 
 behind in this respect. (I could find no actively-maintained, 
 open-source, Mac-viable desktop app bundling tools for either Ruby or 
 Perl, which cooled my interest in them considerably.)
 
 3. Python's binding to Tk makes writing GUI apps a straightforward 
 process. Since I already knew Tk quite well, learning its Python 
 bindings was much simpler than learning another GUI toolkit such as PyQt 
 or wxPython. The strategies I learned from Tcl to develop sophisticated 
 Tk-based UI's translate quite well to Python.
 
 Python isn't perfect; for some instances, I find Tcl a more lightweight 
 and accessible tool to use. I also spend a lot of time digging into Tcl 
 and Tk's C API to extend their capabilities in certain ways; this also 
 allows my Python apps to access such enhancements, via Tkinter. But all 
 in all I'm a happy user of Python, and it will continue to have a 
 primary place in my toolbox.
 
 --Kevin


Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your message. It is helpful to know why some programmers prefer a 
certain OS, programming language, module or program, because this way the 
newbies can find its benefits rapidly.

Yes there are packiging solutions for Perl under Mac, but I haven't tried them 
because I never used a Mac, however, I agree that python is better than Perl 
for creating desktop apps, because the modules which are used for creating GUIs 
are better developed.

Too bad that you prefer Tk-based GUIs, because they are simple to use, I agree, 
but they create and promote discrimination because they are not accessible at 
all for the screen readers used by the blind.

The standard Win32 GUIS/MFC or the libs that use those GUIs like Java SWT and 
wxWIDGETS used by WxPerl, WxPython... are much better accessible. Somebody told 
that he will try to make Tk accessible, but just as I expected, I haven't heard 
anything until now about any kind of success of that project.

Octavian

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Teemu Likonen tliko...@iki.fi writes:

 * 2011-05-24T06:05:35-04:00 * D'Arcy J. M. Cain wrote:

 On Tue, 24 May 2011 09:00:14 +0300
 Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 %d = @l;
 
 Please tell me if Python has a syntax which is more clear than this
 for doing this thing.

 How is that clear? Shorter != clearer. A Python programmer looking
 at that sees line noise.

 I'm a Lisp programmer who sees (some) Python code as line noise.

Exactly, and glad to see there are also non-extremists in this group.

I have been programming Perl for well over 17 years. I've been trying to
switch to Python /several times/ but yet, with all its shortcomings Perl
somehow still suits me better. To D'Arcy and other Pythonistas --
doesn't that sound like an extermistic organization or what -- it might
look like a cat had an accident involving a keyboard but to me, and all
those other people who do enjoy coding Perl it's beauty.

The whole Python is so beatiful  perfect sounds to me like people who
have embraced the latin alphabet calling Devanagari unreadable chicken
scratches made by backwards and poor people. To me it's a writing system
of beauty.

 I don't know but from the point of view of a Lisp programmer Python has
 the same obsession. Not trolling, I just wanted to point out that these
 are just point of views. I don't actually care that much about these
 things.

Wise words. And I agree. To me Python vs. Perl has nothing to do with
being a fanboy (unlike many other posters here). I like both languages,
I have invested a lot of time in learning Python and I am really not
dense. Yet, even though I can program in Python sufficient enough very
often I just pick Perl. Now why is that?

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net writes:

 On Tue, 24 May 2011 00:17:55 -0500
 John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
  $d = @a;
 
 That will give you the number of elements in @a. What you (probably)
 mean is %hash = @array;

 If I was even considering using Perl, this one exchange would send me
 screaming in the opposite direction.

To me as silly as all those people who give Python a wide berth because
of significant whitespace. I am glad that I am not so limited in that
respect. To me programming languages are like writing systems used by
humans; each has its short comings and each has its beauty.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Tue, 24 May 2011 19:10:56 +0300
Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
  If I was even considering using Perl, this one exchange would send me
  screaming in the opposite direction.
 
 If you didn't consider to change the language you prefer it means
 that you are closed minded and use to fell in love with the tools you

Now you are just bordering on rudeness.  I never made any disparaging
remarks about you.  I only talked about a tool that you seem to like
and I don't.  In fact, I did consider and investigate Perl many years
ago along with may other languages before I settled on Python.  I
didn't like it then and I don't like it now.  However, I have never
called someone close minded for preferring a different tool to me.

 Don't make me tell here how many things I don't like in Perl.

Trust me, there is no need.  

 I use to tell those things on Perl mailing lists and make upset their

Good for you.  I also have talked about things in Python that I don't
like on this list.  No one has ever accused me of being afraid to speak
my mind.  That facet of my personality has got me in a lot of trouble
in my life from parents, teachers, bosses and I have even been known to
speak out against the police while they were holding automatic rifles to
my head.  I doubt that there will ever be enough peer pressure on a
mailing list to trump that.

 Similarly, if you don't like something in Perl, why don't you tell
 them what you don't like to the Perl programmers community and not just
 have the guts to tell that in a group where the majority share your
 preferences.

Because I am not a missionary.  Someone came to my house and told me
why their way was better so I spoke up.  Same thing when the JW come to
my front door but I have no interest in going to their Kingdom Hall to
tell them why they are wrong.

 I came here on the list to find good things about Python and to learn
 some things and use its good parts, and not to hear bashing about other
 programming languages.

Same here but someone (I don't even know who started it) felt that it
was necessary to tell us all why their language was better.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/|  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082)(eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 2:50 AM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Wise words. And I agree. To me Python vs. Perl has nothing to do with
 being a fanboy (unlike many other posters here). I like both languages,
 I have invested a lot of time in learning Python and I am really not
 dense. Yet, even though I can program in Python sufficient enough very
 often I just pick Perl. Now why is that?

To me, a language is a tool. The more tools you have competence with,
the easier it will be to select the right one for any job. There are
very few tools that have no use whatsoever; even Ook might be useful
(although I have yet to be asked to port any code to OrangutanOS).
This differs from the notion of having ten paradigms in one language,
in that most source files will identify themselves fairly early on
(possibly even out-of-band, such as filename extensions).

Chris Angelico
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Tue, 24 May 2011 11:52:39 -0500
John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
   $d = @a;
  
  That will give you the number of elements in @a. What you (probably)
  mean is %hash = @array;
 
  If I was even considering using Perl, this one exchange would send me
  screaming in the opposite direction.
 
 To me as silly as all those people who give Python a wide berth because
 of significant whitespace. I am glad that I am not so limited in that
 respect. To me programming languages are like writing systems used by
 humans; each has its short comings and each has its beauty.

My point was that even proponents of the language can make a
significant error based on the way the variable is named.  It's like
the old Fortran IV that I first learned where the name of the variable
determined whether it was an integer or a floating point.

One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is I
refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
this does.'

When I first looked at Perl it looked like line noise.  When I first
looked at Python it looked like pseudo-code.

Look, I couldn't care less what other people use.  I just don't see any
reason for someone to come into a Python group and start proselytizing
about why their tool is better than ours any more than I would feel any
need to go to a Perl group and start trying to convert them.

Bottom line - they did a study once (sorry, can't point to it any more)
to determine the best tool for development.  Turns out that the most
productive tool was generally the one that the user believed was the
most productive.  In hindsight I think that that was rather obvious.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/|  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082)(eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 2:50 AM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Wise words. And I agree. To me Python vs. Perl has nothing to do with
 being a fanboy (unlike many other posters here). I like both languages,
 I have invested a lot of time in learning Python and I am really not
 dense. Yet, even though I can program in Python sufficient enough very
 often I just pick Perl. Now why is that?

 To me, a language is a tool.

To me, and to a lot of Perl programmers it's not different.

 The more tools you have competence with, the easier it will be to
 select the right one for any job. There are very few tools that have
 no use whatsoever; even Ook might be useful (although I have yet to be
 asked to port any code to OrangutanOS).  This differs from the notion
 of having ten paradigms in one language,

If this is referring to Perl: the myths surrounding there is more than
one way are even more crazy than there is only one way, maybe because
more than one makes it so much easier to make those myths up?

On top of that: how many paradigms does Python support?  And which
paradigms does Perl support and Python doesn't?

Roughly there are two dialects of Perl [1]: what people who never took the
time to learn it write, and the rest. Also, having more than one way to
code something doesn't mean that there are no preferrences. Python has
also several ways to do certain things; yet most skilled programmers
have a preference for one way. It's not that different with Perl; in my
experience exactly the same even.

Of course one can say a lot about Perl; I can. But I have never had a
rough time reading someone else's code, unless the person had no clue
about programming to begin with [2].

If Perl is really such a disaster, why are people using it? Or are they
all short-sighted idiots who don't know better? Several Perl programmers
I know, including myself, are fully aware of Python and other
programming languages. Yet, somehow they still program in Perl...

[1] http://www.bofh.org.uk/2010/07/25/a-tale-of-two-languages
[2] I once had to port a piece of Pascal code and after some studying it
turned out that the 100+ lines or so did some variant of bubble sort 
and near the end reversed the order in a separate loop.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net writes:

 On Tue, 24 May 2011 11:52:39 -0500
 John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
   $d = @a;
  
  That will give you the number of elements in @a. What you (probably)
  mean is %hash = @array;
 
  If I was even considering using Perl, this one exchange would send me
  screaming in the opposite direction.
 
 To me as silly as all those people who give Python a wide berth because
 of significant whitespace. I am glad that I am not so limited in that
 respect. To me programming languages are like writing systems used by
 humans; each has its short comings and each has its beauty.

 My point was that even proponents of the language can make a
 significant error based on the way the variable is named.

And someone can't misspell dict, for example? Are we now going to judge
a language on a typo someone just made?

 When I first looked at Perl it looked like line noise.  When I first
 looked at Python it looked like pseudo-code.

When people who are used to a latin alpabeth look at Devanagari they
probably see scratches make by chickens. I saw beauty (and still see
it). To someone fluent in Devanagari the latin alpabeth might look like
Perl ;-).

Anyway, I have been exposed to pseudo-code a lot before I picked up
Perl, and yet, Perl somehow stuck with me. I learned about Python a
little later (IIRC), and have tried to pick it up several times over the
years that followed. Last year I have been more serious about picking it
up; and I even did some paid for work in it. I /can/ program in Python,
I do /like/ Python, but somehow I like Perl more; even when I am fully
aware of its shortcommings each time I use it.

As for line noise: very often it turns out that people mean the regular
expressions by this. But a similar dialect is used by many other
programming languages that I know of. The difference is that Perl has
dedicated operators for it.

A Perl programmer will call this line noise:

double_word_re = re.compile(r\b(?Pword\w+)\s+(?P=word)(?!\w),
re.IGNORECASE)
for match in double_word_re.finditer(text):
print ({0} is duplicated.format(match.group(word))

(p500 of Programming in Python 3, 2nd edition, any typos by me).

 Look, I couldn't care less what other people use.

In that case you're an exception here. Or maybe the weekly Perl bashers
are way more vocal here and drown people like you out. One thing I hate
about comp.lang.perl.misc is the ivory tower attitude there. One thing I
hate about comp.lang.python is the weekly Perl bashing; to me it makes
those people look like extremists (Pythonistas, what's in a word), and
to be honest, it does affect how I view Python.

 I just don't see any reason for someone to come into a Python group
 and start proselytizing about why their tool is better than ours any
 more than I would feel any need to go to a Perl group and start trying
 to convert them.

Yet it seems to be accepted behavoir here to weekly bash Perl...

 Bottom line - they did a study once (sorry, can't point to it any more)
 to determine the best tool for development.  Turns out that the most
 productive tool was generally the one that the user believed was the
 most productive.  In hindsight I think that that was rather obvious.

Doesn't surprise me. I did switch to Emacs a few years back (used
Textpad for many years) but I don't think I now produce more code /
hour. But I am able to do some things way easier compared to using
Textpad, and that gives me pleasure.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: John Bokma j...@castleamber.com

Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com writes:

From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
a = [1,2]
dict([a])

Yes, but

d = dict([a])

is not so nice as

$d = @a;

That will give you the number of elements in @a. What you (probably)
mean is %hash = @array;

Of course. Thank you for correction.

Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:56 AM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:
 To me, a language is a tool.

 To me, and to a lot of Perl programmers it's not different.

 The more tools you have competence with, the easier it will be to
 select the right one for any job. There are very few tools that have
 no use whatsoever; even Ook might be useful (although I have yet to be
 asked to port any code to OrangutanOS).  This differs from the notion
 of having ten paradigms in one language,

 If this is referring to Perl: the myths surrounding there is more than
 one way are even more crazy than there is only one way, maybe because
 more than one makes it so much easier to make those myths up?

 On top of that: how many paradigms does Python support?  And which
 paradigms does Perl support and Python doesn't?

You miss my point. To me, BOTH Perl AND Python are tools; there is a
time and a place for each. Also in my toolkit are C, C++, Pike, REXX,
c, c, c. Even Java and ActionScript/Flash (both of which I detest
for several reasons) have their place - browser-based applications
that aren't limited to HTTP (try writing an in-browser MUD client in
Javascript). Every language has its downsides; every language has its
unique feature that makes it special. And every language I've ever
used has taught me something.

Know both. Bash both (if you feel so inclined). Use both.

Chris Angelico
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:39 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net wrote:
 My point was that even proponents of the language can make a
 significant error based on the way the variable is named.  It's like
 the old Fortran IV that I first learned where the name of the variable
 determined whether it was an integer or a floating point.

I believe that's the origin of one of the proofs that God is real
(unless declared integer). And hey, I can't hate something that gave
us the classic use of i, j, k as loop indices!

 One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is I
 refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
 snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
 this does.'

Yes, I believe that was Perl. And an amusing quote. But most of the
point of it comes from the fact that Perl uses punctuation for most of
its keywords, whereas (say) Python uses English words; it's a lot more
fun to crunch something down when you can use $| and friends than when
you have to put x and y, complete with spaces, for a simple boolean.
But that says nothing about which language is actually better for
working with... beyond the fact that Perl can get more mileage out of
an 80-character line!

 When I first looked at Perl it looked like line noise.  When I first
 looked at Python it looked like pseudo-code.

When I first looked at assembly language it looked like random junk
left behind in memory. When I first looked at COBOL it looked like ...
COBOL. Doesn't make either of them better or worse.

Pseudo-code is not a viable language for a computer to parse, but it's
a good language for scribbling down comments in. That doesn't
necessarily mean that a programming language that's closer to
pseudo-code is good. And verbosity doesn't necessarily equate to
quality; for instance, when I'm working in both Python and PHP, I find
it FAR tidier to use Python's {1:2,3:4] notation than PHP's
array(1=2,3=4) - but on the flip side, I would prefer to have
program structure defined by keywords like if and while than
obscure random line noise. (Fortunately, most sane languages do indeed
use keywords there.)

Chris Angelico
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:56 AM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:
 To me, a language is a tool.

 To me, and to a lot of Perl programmers it's not different.

 The more tools you have competence with, the easier it will be to
 select the right one for any job. There are very few tools that have
 no use whatsoever; even Ook might be useful (although I have yet to be
 asked to port any code to OrangutanOS).  This differs from the notion
 of having ten paradigms in one language,

 If this is referring to Perl: the myths surrounding there is more than
 one way are even more crazy than there is only one way, maybe because
 more than one makes it so much easier to make those myths up?

 On top of that: how many paradigms does Python support?  And which
 paradigms does Perl support and Python doesn't?

 You miss my point.

Could be, English is my second language. But to me ten paradigms in one
language smelled of Perl bashing (or maybe Falcon bashing). My
apologies if that was not the intent.

 To me, BOTH Perl AND Python are tools; there is a time and a place for
 each. Also in my toolkit are C, C++, Pike, REXX, c, c, c. Even Java
 and ActionScript/Flash (both of which I detest for several reasons)
 have their place - browser-based applications that aren't limited to
 HTTP (try writing an in-browser MUD client in Javascript). Every
 language has its downsides; every language has its unique feature that
 makes it special. And every language I've ever used has taught me
 something.

 Know both. Bash both (if you feel so inclined). Use both.

Can't agree more with you, thanks for the clarification.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:39 AM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain da...@druid.net wrote:
My point was that even proponents of the language can make a
significant error based on the way the variable is named. It's like
the old Fortran IV that I first learned where the name of the variable
determined whether it was an integer or a floating point.

I believe that's the origin of one of the proofs that God is real
(unless declared integer). And hey, I can't hate something that gave
us the classic use of i, j, k as loop indices!

One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is I
refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
this does.'

Yes, I believe that was Perl. And an amusing quote. But most of the
point of it comes from the fact that Perl uses punctuation for most of
its keywords,

For example?

whereas (say) Python uses English words; it's a lot more
fun to crunch something down when you can use $|

That's not a keyword but a special (global) variable. On top of that,
you don't have to use it [1] and most people most likely encounter this in
(badly) written CGI scripts originating in the last century.

Yes, Perl is fantastic for writing hard to read obfuscated code. And
yes, newbies are great at writing this from the very start, especially
since they seem to copy paste examples written by other newbies (often
written in the previous century...). But Perl doesn't force one to write
unreadable code. If Perl was really so unreadable, why haven't I /still/
not switched to Python? What keeps me going back to Perl?

and friends than when you have to put x and y, complete with spaces,
for a simple boolean.

Perl has also the and logical operator. This is legal Perl:

if ( $x and $y ) {
print yes\n;
}

[1] You can use $OUTPUT_AUTOFLUSH (use English;), or use IO::Handle and
use the autoflush method [2].

[2] In Perl 5.14 IO::File is now loaded on demand:

http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl/pod/perldelta.pod#Filehandle_method_calls_load_IO::File_on_demand

--
John Bokma j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:16 AM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 Yes, I believe that was Perl. And an amusing quote. But most of the
 point of it comes from the fact that Perl uses punctuation for most of
 its keywords,

 For example?

 whereas (say) Python uses English words; it's a lot more
 fun to crunch something down when you can use $|

 That's not a keyword but a special (global) variable. On top of that,
 you don't have to use it [1] and most people most likely encounter this in
 (badly) written CGI scripts originating in the last century.

Okay, poor example. But there's a lot of Perl that uses concise
notation for things that in Python are keyworded; for instance,
regular expressions. I'm insufficiently fluent in Perl to quote good
examples; mainly what I'm referring to is the notion of operators that
are separators, as opposed to keywords that get blank-delimited. I
generally prefer syntactic elements to be punctuation (eg { } rather
than BEGIN and END (or DO and END)). It does also make things easier
to crunch, for better or for worse.

 and friends than when you have to put x and y, complete with spaces,
 for a simple boolean.

 Perl has also the and logical operator. This is legal Perl:

 if ( $x and $y ) {
  print yes\n;
 }

That's at a completely different precedence level, isn't it? For
operators up where you expect them to be, there's  and ||. A bit of
digging (why isn't this sort of thing always the first hit for name
of language operator precedence in Google?) brought up:

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html

For instance:

$a = $b  $c ? $e : $f;
# versus
$a = $b and $c ? $e : $f;

The first one is an assignment to $a, conditional on two variables.
The second is an unconditional assignment to $a, and then based on
that, evaluates either $e or $f and does nothing with it.

Python:
a = e if b and c else f

It's pretty similar, actually (although, coming from a C background, I
do prefer to have the condition first); but I could crunch the first
one down a lot, while the last one is almost as tight as it can be.

$a=$b$c?$e:$f;
a=e if b and c else f

It's that crunched appearance that makes Perl look like line noise,
and the open keyworded appearance that makes Python look like
pseudocode. But that's not necessarily a good thing; a courteous
programmer can space out Perl to keep it readable, and he then has the
option of crunching pieces that are 'logically one' and spacing out
the parts that aren't:

$a= $b$c ? $e : $f;

Silly, contrived example, but in production code I've often had
situations where it makes sense to space out one part of an expression
and crunch another. And when everything's an English word, that's not
an available option.

Oh, and that's ignoring the issue that not everyone is fluent in English.

That said, though, I do find Python a lot easier for reading other
people's code in. A LOT easier.

Chris Angelico
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:16 AM, John Bokma j...@castleamber.com wrote:
 Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 Yes, I believe that was Perl. And an amusing quote. But most of the
 point of it comes from the fact that Perl uses punctuation for most of
 its keywords,

 For example?

 whereas (say) Python uses English words; it's a lot more
 fun to crunch something down when you can use $|

 That's not a keyword but a special (global) variable. On top of that,
 you don't have to use it [1] and most people most likely encounter this in
 (badly) written CGI scripts originating in the last century.

 Okay, poor example. But there's a lot of Perl that uses concise
 notation for things that in Python are keyworded; for instance,
 regular expressions.

Perl does have indeed operators for matching and substitution. It's:

( my $foo = $bar ) =~ s/ ... / ... /;

versus

foo = re.sub(r ... ,  ... , bar )

and:

my $foo = qr/

...

/xi;

versus:

foo = re.compile(r

...

, re.IGNORECASE|re.VERBOSE)

It's just a matter of taste IMO. The regular expression noise stays the
same ;-).

 and friends than when you have to put x and y, complete with spaces,
 for a simple boolean.

 Perl has also the and logical operator. This is legal Perl:

 if ( $x and $y ) {
  print yes\n;
 }

 That's at a completely different precedence level, isn't it? 

Yes, /but/ in this case it doesn't matter. Of course there are cases
that it /does/ matter:

 For instance:

 $a = $b  $c ? $e : $f;
 # versus
 $a = $b and $c ? $e : $f;

 The first one is an assignment to $a, conditional on two variables.
 The second is an unconditional assignment to $a, and then based on
 that, evaluates either $e or $f and does nothing with it.

 Python:
 a = e if b and c else f

Yes, recently added to the language, before that you had to and or
your way out of it (or use lambdas).

 It's pretty similar, actually (although, coming from a C background, I
 do prefer to have the condition first); but I could crunch the first
 one down a lot, while the last one is almost as tight as it can be.

 $a=$b$c?$e:$f;
 a=e if b and c else f

 It's that crunched appearance that makes Perl look like line noise,

So you just agree with what I earlier wrote: one /can/ write harder to
read in Perl, like you can jump off a cliff. And I have seen a lot of
extremely badly written Perl code, but never seen a disaster like the
one above ;-).

 and the open keyworded appearance that makes Python look like
 pseudocode. But that's not necessarily a good thing; a courteous
 programmer can space out Perl to keep it readable, and he then has the
 option of crunching pieces that are 'logically one' and spacing out
 the parts that aren't:

 $a= $b$c ? $e : $f;

 Silly, contrived example, but in production code I've often had
 situations where it makes sense to space out one part of an expression
 and crunch another. And when everything's an English word, that's not
 an available option.

I would write it like

$a = ( $b and $c ) ? $e : $f;

 That said, though, I do find Python a lot easier for reading other
 people's code in. A LOT easier.

Like I wrote earlier: I find Perl easier to read. And honestly, I don't
know why. Partially it might have a lot to do with having been exposed
to it much more. But many years back, when I could pick between several
languages, Perl was the one that stuck with me. And that was before
everybody and his mom was hacking CGI scripts in Perl (badly).

And while I do want to switch to Python (or use it more often), for one
reason or another it's hard. Maybe it's for similar reasons that one
loves Spanish but hates German as a second language (or vice versa)?

Both Perl and Python are evolving. Perl has a lot of bagage from the
beginning, and more so since a lot got slapped on later on. Things are
changing, but you just can't make major changes since people, like me I
guess, are used to how things are right now.

I now and then have peeks at Perl 6 and each time my first reaction is:
this is Perl only in name; it's very, very different. On the other hand
it still shares what I consider warts with Perl 5.

-- 
John Bokma   j3b

Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com
Since indentation seems so crucial to easy comprehension of the logical 
structure of a program,

making it a mandatory syntactical structure becomes a desirable feature
for code that must be maintained (by others, in many cases).



Why in many cases? I wrote hundreads of programs which are working fine 
and which are maintained only by me. (But they would be very easy to 
maintain by other people if it would be necessary).

So in that case, why to be forced to use a strict indentation?



As for the dictionary from list... Do not confuse /algorithms/
selected by the programmer from what is part of the native language.
Otherwise one could complain that there is more than one way to code a
spam-filter using Python...



Exactly, I am not talking about a complex task that can be done in many ways 
in all programming languages.
I am talking about a simple way of creating a hash/dict from an array, which 
is so simple that there should be really a single way to do it, or very few.


Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 11:47 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com 
wrote:

From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
I am talking about that flexibility which was criticized in the previous 
messages telling that this flexibility allows any programmer to use his 
own way.
Perl doesn't force anyone to indent the code, don't force the programmer 
to define a hash element before using it, allow the programmer to 
interpret the variables in strings directly. These things should be not 
used always, but if in some cases if the programmer wants to use them, he 
can use them with no problems. And this means flexibility.

This is syntax-level flexibility, which, IMHO, does not affect
'advanceness' of modules at all. At language level, python is far more
flexible than perl with its magic methods and hooks, allowing to
overload any underlying language principles and protocols.

This means that you are forgetting Moose objects in Perl, right?
Moose is a very advanced object type system that will be the default type in 
Perl 6, but which was also implemented in Perl 5, which offers a lot of 
features for introspections in the object structure.

And the flexibility do offer the possibility of coding much easier and 
offering more features.
There are more, but a single eloquent feature is the possibility of 
interpreting variables in strings which cannot be done so nice in Python.

First, this is a bad style of mapping urls, because this list must be 
maintained every time the programmer changes something in a controller 
that makes the app need to use other urls.

Explicit is better than implicit.

This is false. Explicit in this case means to write code in 2 places for 
doing a certain thing, and maintaining means changing the code in 2 places, 
which is harder and prone to errors.

One of reasons why I chose Pylons/Pyramid as my standard toolkit is that 
it allowed me to define

mappers in any way I needed them to.

In Catalyst you can also define the url mappings in any way you need, not 
only based on controller/actions locations, but you don't need to do this by 
creating code in 2 places so it would be easier to maintain.
In Catalyst all the mappers are done automaticly, but they can be done in 
any way you like, even in more ways that under Pylons/Pyramid as I shown 
(unless in Pylons/Pyramid can be also defined chained mappings and mappings 
based on regular expressions).

 If you want automatically defined mappers, there are lots of other
python frameworks and modules which do exactly that. Moreover, even
Routes itself (module, which does url mapping in Pylons) allows you to
use automated mappers, via :controller/:action tokens. It allows
pretty much everything you listed as 'features' of catalyst mappings.
If you prefer to stuff routing logic into controllers and have default
routing based on controllers and method names, you can use TurboGears
framework, which has exactly that mindset, or you can use its mapping
modules in Pyramid application.

Yes, the single difference is that Catalyst supports all of them, and it 
also supports using any templating system, and any ORM and any form 
processor, while some of the Python web frameworks don't support absolutely 
everything and you need to abandon some preferred modules for beeing able to 
use some other modules which are supported.

The module DBIx::Class which is used usually as an ORM can create the 
class files for all the tables from a database (MySQL, Oracle, 
PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL, etc), and it can be used to search using 
unions, sub-selects, can define views at ORM level, can accept to insert 
different types of objects like DateTime objects and can also return 
those type of objects, and many other things, and most of the things it 
can do can be done without using SQL code at all, but only standard Perl 
code and Perl data structures.

There are lots of Python modules which do exactly this and much more.
SQLAlchemy, SQLObject, Web2Py's DAL, and so on. They are integrated
into frameworks by default.

I've checked the documentation for some of them and I've seen that most of 
them don't support sub-selects and some of them require using plain SQL code 
in their construct for more complex queries.
Please tell me which of them supports sub-selects, and are able to return 
objects for date and datetime fields that have methods for beeing able to 
print just the year or day, or the months names in the specified locale 
because it would be useful.

Yes, for web apps I have seen more things which can be done much better 
in Perl, much easier and clear, with less code, and not because the 
programmer needs to do not-recommended tricks for shortening the code, 
but because there are very many modules on CPAN that do the hard work.

I doubt you had enough experience with python frameworks like
Pyramid/Pylons or Web2Py. They have all features you listed, and code
is as trivial and clean, as

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Chris Angelico

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 From: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com

 Since indentation seems so crucial to easy comprehension of the logical
 structure of a program,
 making it a mandatory syntactical structure becomes a desirable feature
 for code that must be maintained (by others, in many cases).

 Why in many cases? I wrote hundreads of programs which are working fine
 and which are maintained only by me. (But they would be very easy to
 maintain by other people if it would be necessary).
 So in that case, why to be forced to use a strict indentation?

The reason for clear code is maintenance, not maintenance-by-others.
If you come back to something in a year, you'll appreciate proper
variable names, indentation, etc.

That said, though, I still do not believe in Python's philosophy of
significant whitespace. I like to be able, if I choose, to put one
entire logical unit on one line, such that it can be commented out
with a single comment marker, or duplicated to another line and one
copy commented out, or whatever. To that end, I sometimes want to put
an if, its associated else, and sometimes a statement for both
branches, all in the one line. And that's not possible when whitespace
alone defines the end of an if/else block (the one-line form of a
Python 'if' can't have a non-conditional statement after it at all),
but is quite easy when things are delimited with braces.

Bug report: The from __future__ import braces statement isn't
working properly. Pls fix, kthxbye. :)

But I still like Python overall. There's no such thing as a perfect
language, and when it comes to syntax disagreements, I dislike
Python's significant whitespace far less than I dislike PHP's adorned
variable names. And Python, under the hood, is a very good engine for
doing what I need to do.

Chris Angelico
-- 
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Terry Reedy


On 5/23/2011 1:31 AM, Octavian Rasnita wrote:



I am talking about a simple way of creating a hash/dict from an array,
which is so simple that there should be really a single way to do it, or
very few.


Again, Python has such:

 dict([['one',1],['two', 2]])
{'two': 2, 'one': 1}

--
Terry Jan Reedy

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Carl Banks

On Sunday, May 22, 2011 12:44:18 AM UTC-7, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 I've noticed that on many Perl mailing lists the list members talk very
 rarely about Python, but only on this Python mailing list I read many
 discussions about Perl, in which most of the participants use to agree that
 yes, Python is better, as it shouldn't be obvious that most of the list
 members prefer Python.

Evidently Perl users choose to bash other languages in those languages' own 
mailing lists.


 If Python would be so great, you wouldn't talk so much about how bad are
 other languages,

Sure we would.  Sometimes it's fun to sit on your lofty throne and scoff at the 
peasantry.


 or if these discussions are not initiated by envy, you would
 be also talking about how bad is Visual Basic, or Pascal, or Delphi, or who
 knows other languages.

I would suggest that envy isn't the reason, the reason is that Perl is just 
that much worse than Visual Basic, Pascal, and Delphi.  We only make fun of the 
really, really bad langauges.

(Or, less cynically, it's because Perl and Python historically filled the same 
niche, whereas VB, Pascal, and Delphi were often used for different sorts of 
programming.)


What I'm trying to say here is your logic is invalid.  People have all kinds of 
reasons to badmouth other languages; that some mailing list has a culture that 
is a bit more or a bit less approving of it than some other list tells us 
nothing.  In any case it's ridiculous to claim envy as factor nowadays, as 
Python is clearly on the rise while Perl is on the decline.  Few people are 
choosing Perl for new projects.


Carl Banks
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Chris Angelico

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Carl Banks pavlovevide...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sunday, May 22, 2011 12:44:18 AM UTC-7, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 If Python would be so great, you wouldn't talk so much about how bad are
 other languages,

 Sure we would.  Sometimes it's fun to sit on your lofty throne and scoff at 
 the peasantry.

It's also fun, and sometimes productive, to sit on many different
lofty thrones, and then to have a Jedi Council meeting in which we
discuss which thrones are hard to climb onto, which ones are easy for
a child to sit on but hard to get any work done on, and which ones are
really comfortable and ergonomic, but have just that one little hard
bit to the right of where your arm wants to rest, but if you're
careful it won't jab into you too badly... and in those discussions,
Perl is a literal Swiss Army Knife. :)

 I would suggest that envy isn't the reason, the reason is that Perl is just 
 that much worse than Visual Basic, Pascal, and Delphi.  We only make fun of 
 the really, really bad langauges.

I'm not sure that Perl deserves to be put alongside Visual Basic. I'm
not sure that ANY language deserves that...

Chris Angelico
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 There are more, but a single eloquent feature is the possibility of
 interpreting variables in strings which cannot be done so nice in Python.

I've should probably mentioned it earlier, but I'm not Perl expert,
not following its development and can't be bothered to read its docs.
Could you please provide examples of features you mention with
expected result, so I could suggest reasonable Python analogue?

 This is false. Explicit in this case means to write code in 2 places for
 doing a certain thing, and maintaining means changing the code in 2 places,
 which is harder and prone to errors.

Not sure what do you mean by 'write code in 2 places'. All mapping
code is located in routes config, including all needed args
validation.
But if you want to couple it with controller code, there, as I said,
are numerous ways to do it. You can even do something like this:

class SomeController(BaseController):
...
@map(conditions=dict(method='GET'))
def some_method(self, arg1:int, arg2:str):
 ...

so it would be called via /somecontroller/some-method/1/blabla with
trivial decorator.

 (unless in Pylons/Pyramid can be also defined chained mappings and mappings
 based on regular expressions).

Not sure what do you mean by based on regular expressions. Routes
paths ARE regular expressions. Conditions are regexes too.

As for chained mappings - no idea, never had the need in such thing.

 Yes, the single difference is that Catalyst supports all of them, and it
 also supports using any templating system, and any ORM and any form
 processor, while some of the Python web frameworks don't support absolutely
 everything and you need to abandon some preferred modules for beeing able to
 use some other modules which are supported.

Pyramid and Pylons let you use pretty much any templating package and
ORM as well. There is nothing in them that would block such modules.

 I've checked the documentation for some of them and I've seen that most of
 them don't support sub-selects and some of them require using plain SQL code
 in their construct for more complex queries.
 Please tell me which of them supports sub-selects, and are able to return
 objects for date and datetime fields that have methods for beeing able to
 print just the year or day, or the months names in the specified locale
 because it would be useful.

Python has builtin type for DateTime, and SQLAlchemy, for example,
returns exactly that:

# python
Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, May 17 2011, 19:31:41)
[GCC 4.4.5] on linux2
Type help, copyright, credits or license for more information.
 from sadt import Test, Session
 import datetime
 Test(1)
Test(1, 1, 2011-05-23 18:53:39.459054)
 Test(2)
Test(2, 2, 2011-05-23 18:53:51.859754)
 t1 = Session.query(Test).filter(Test.val == 1).one()
 t1
Test(1, 1, 2011-05-23 18:53:39.459054)
 t1.date
datetime.datetime(2011, 5, 23, 18, 53, 39, 459054)
 t1.date.year
2011
 t1.date.month
5
 print Session.query(Test).filter(Test.date == datetime.datetime(2011, 5, 
 23, 18, 53, 39, 459054)).one()
Test(1, 1, 2011-05-23 18:53:39.459054)
 print Session.query(Test).filter(Test.date  datetime.date(2010, 1, 
 1)).all()
[Test(1, 1, 2011-05-23 18:53:39.459054), Test(2, 2, 2011-05-23
18:53:51.859754)]

sadt sources here if interesting: http://pastebin.ca/2067372

So as you see, datetime is not only returned properly, but you can
also do queries with either date or datetime values, including
comparison and range.

Subqueries are fully supported too:
 ...
 Session.query(Test).from_self().all()
2011-05-23 19:07:02,662 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.0x...552c
SELECT anon_1.test_id AS anon_1_test_id, anon_1.test_val AS
anon_1_test_val, anon_1.test_date AS anon_1_test_date
FROM (SELECT test.id AS test_id, test.val AS test_val, test.date AS test_date
FROM test) AS anon_1
2011-05-23 19:07:02,662 INFO sqlalchemy.engine.base.Engine.0x...552c ()
[Test(1, 1, 2011-05-23 19:06:36.804128), Test(2, 1, 2011-05-23
19:06:36.808022), Test(3, 1, 2011-05-23 19:06:36.810698), Test(4,
2, 2011-05-23 19:06:36.813357), Test(5, 3, 2011-05-23
19:06:36.816373)]

This is most trivial example of subqueries, since I'm too lazy to
produce proper tables to demonstrate it, but SQLAlchemy has very good
subquery support, as its typical way to deal with one-to-many
relations (but it does support other loading strategies as well,
including inner/outer joins or lazy loading).

 it can do but DBIx::Class cannot, because otherwise it would be very simple
 for anyone to just say go to read the documentation and see how great it
 is.

But go to read the docs argument works both ways - I have zero
knowledge of DBIx::Class, so obviously I cannot say what features it
lacks compared to SQLA.
However this is what I wanted to highlight - you cannot simply state
that Perl offers more advanced modules and libraries which are not
available for Python if you don't have reasonable experience with
according

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Aleksandar Radulovic

Hi,

I'm going to skip the Perl vs. Python flame-bait and correct your one statement.

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 Somebody told that C# and Objective C are good languages. They might be good, 
 but they are proprietary, and not only that they are proprietary, but they 
 need to be ran under platforms that cannot be used freely, so from the 
 freedom point of view, Perl, Ruby, Python and Java are the ways to go.

Neither of those are proprietary and can, in fact, be used freely. GNU
compiler compiles objective-c code with no problem and then there's
Mono for C# and .NET development on multiple platforms.

But if by proprietary you mean the libraries and APIs that complement
those languages, the it's worth noting that Mono implements most of
.NET framework and it is free. If you want free Cocoa APIs (or other
Obj-C frameworks) look into GnuSTEP.

Best regards,
alex.



-- 
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http://www.a13x.info
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Terry Reedy tjre...@udel.edu

On 5/23/2011 1:31 AM, Octavian Rasnita wrote:



I am talking about a simple way of creating a hash/dict from an array,
which is so simple that there should be really a single way to do it, or
very few.


Again, Python has such:

 dict([['one',1],['two', 2]])
{'two': 2, 'one': 1}



That is not an array, but a list. An array has a name and we can't do 
something like the following simple statement in Python:


l = (1, 2)
d = dict(l)

While in Perl we can do:

@l = (1, 2);
%d = @l;

But let's remember from what this discussion started. This is not a Python 
critique, because each language has its own ways.
I just wanted to show that the fact that there is more than one way to do 
it in Perl and that there is a single way in Python are just buzzwords, 
because this was an example where in Python there are many ways to do it 
while in Perl there is a single way used usually, which is also more simple.


Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com
On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com 
wrote:

From: Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com

Since indentation seems so crucial to easy comprehension of the logical
structure of a program,
making it a mandatory syntactical structure becomes a desirable feature
for code that must be maintained (by others, in many cases).

Why in many cases? I wrote hundreads of programs which are working fine
and which are maintained only by me. (But they would be very easy to
maintain by other people if it would be necessary).
So in that case, why to be forced to use a strict indentation?

The reason for clear code is maintenance, not maintenance-by-others.
If you come back to something in a year, you'll appreciate proper
variable names, indentation, etc.

That said, though, I still do not believe in Python's philosophy of
significant whitespace. I like to be able, if I choose, to put one
entire logical unit on one line, such that it can be commented out
with a single comment marker, or duplicated to another line and one
copy commented out, or whatever. To that end, I sometimes want to put
an if, its associated else, and sometimes a statement for both
branches, all in the one line. And that's not possible when whitespace
alone defines the end of an if/else block (the one-line form of a
Python 'if' can't have a non-conditional statement after it at all),
but is quite easy when things are delimited with braces.

Yes I also agree with that, and I also prefer *in some cases* to write short 
code in a single line like:

print ... if $var;

print $var == 123 ? abcd : cedf;

print $var =~ /foo/ ? abc : cdef;

...instead of writing a few lines of code. These constructs are not 
recommended for Perl either, and Perl::Critic would give a warning when it 
will be used with a certain level of errors checking, but it is preferable 
to be able to do what you want how you or your team want, not as the creator 
of the programming language wants.

And I don't think that there are programmers that find the lines above hard 
to understand or maintain.

Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com 
wrote:

There are more, but a single eloquent feature is the possibility of
interpreting variables in strings which cannot be done so nice in Python.


I've should probably mentioned it earlier, but I'm not Perl expert,
not following its development and can't be bothered to read its docs.
Could you please provide examples of features you mention with
expected result, so I could suggest reasonable Python analogue?


The ones that bash other languages on the mailing list for their prefered 
language should provide good comparisons and not just make false statements, 
considering that it is enough, since most of the list members will agree 
because they like Python more than other languages anyway.


If they think that what they say is true, why don't they make those 
statements on Perl mailing lists, but again, offering valid comparisons.



But if you want to couple it with controller code, there, as I said,
are numerous ways to do it. You can even do something like this:

class SomeController(BaseController):
   ...
   @map(conditions=dict(method='GET'))
   def some_method(self, arg1:int, arg2:str):
...
so it would be called via /somecontroller/some-method/1/blabla with
trivial decorator.



Is the url something like /some_controller/some_method? Or the underlines 
are deleted from the name of the controller and replaced with - in the 
name of the method?
Is it possible to also add a configuration here to call this some_method 
when the url /some_controller/some-method-string is accessed?

(define another string than the name of the method)
Is it possible to configure it to access this subroutine only if a certain 
number of parameters are sent in the URL?


If yes, it means that its dispatcher is better than I've seen in the short 
tutorial on the web.


(unless in Pylons/Pyramid can be also defined chained mappings and 
mappings

based on regular expressions).


Not sure what do you mean by based on regular expressions. Routes
paths ARE regular expressions. Conditions are regexes too.

As for chained mappings - no idea, never had the need in such thing.


The chained dispatcher is one of the best thing offered by Catalyst, because 
with it the same code should not be used twice.


For example, one can define a subroutine in which a certain record is 
selected from the DB and is placed in stash.
Then there may be other subroutines for different tasks, one for editing 
that record, one for deleting that record and so on.
One chain can start with the base subroutine that makes the selection from 
the DB then executes the subroutine that makes the deletion and another 
chain can start with the base subroutine that makes the selection than 
continues with the one that starts the editting.
Of course, the chain can have more links, not only 2, but this was just a 
very short example.


I've checked the documentation for some of them and I've seen that most 
of
them don't support sub-selects and some of them require using plain SQL 
code

in their construct for more complex queries.
Please tell me which of them supports sub-selects, and are able to return
objects for date and datetime fields that have methods for beeing able to
print just the year or day, or the months names in the specified locale
because it would be useful.


Python has builtin type for DateTime, and SQLAlchemy, for example,
returns exactly that:

t1.date.month

5


Can it also set the current locale, for example romanian, and print the name 
of the current month?

...something like t1.date.set_locale('ro').month_name?


SELECT anon_1.test_id AS anon_1_test_id, anon_1.test_val AS
anon_1_test_val, anon_1.test_date AS anon_1_test_date
FROM (SELECT test.id AS test_id, test.val AS test_val, test.date AS 
test_date

FROM test) AS anon_1


As I said, that ORM is not able to do those SQL constructs without using 
literal SQL code, but only Python variables and data structures...
An ORM is usually prefered exactly because it doesn't force the programmer 
to concatenate strings for generating the SQL code, but he/she can use just 
standard Perl/Python code.

Or this is possible in another way without using SQL code?

it can do but DBIx::Class cannot, because otherwise it would be very 
simple

for anyone to just say go to read the documentation and see how great it
is.


But go to read the docs argument works both ways - I have zero
knowledge of DBIx::Class, so obviously I cannot say what features it
lacks compared to SQLA.


Yes you are perfectly right, but not those programmers that also use Perl 
started to say that Perl can do this and Python can't, or that in Perl this 
is shorter and nicer than in Python.
I just wanted to show that anything Python can do can be done in Perl also, 
and in some fields Python is better, in other fields Perl is better, and we 
should use whatever we like the most, and not say bad words about other

Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 7:49 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 That is not an array, but a list. An array has a name and we can't do
 something like the following simple statement in Python:

 l = (1, 2)
 d = dict(l)

 An array has a name
What?
In python there is no difference whether your object has any names
mapped to it or not. Its all the same, and object itself does not even
know.
Moreover, (1, 2) is tuple rather than 'array'. If you mean array as
implemented as array, then list is what you want. If you mean array
literally, there is special type 'array' somewhere in stdlib.

As for can't do:

 a = [1,2]
 dict([a])
{1: 2}
 a = (1,2)
 dict([a])
{1: 2}


-- 
With best regards,
Daniel Kluev
-- 
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
 As I said, that ORM is not able to do those SQL constructs without using
 literal SQL code, but only Python variables and data structures...
 An ORM is usually prefered exactly because it doesn't force the programmer
 to concatenate strings for generating the SQL code, but he/she can use just
 standard Perl/Python code.
 Or this is possible in another way without using SQL code?

Did you actually read the code? SQL there is debug output of
SQLAlchemy for python code `Session.query(Test).from_self().all()`, I
left it there to just show you that it emits subquery to RDBMS.
All code in REPL is prefixed by ` `. Other lines are just output.

 Can it also set the current locale, for example romanian, and print the name 
 of the current month?
 ...something like t1.date.set_locale('ro').month_name?

There is separate module for date localization. You can pass datetime
object to it and it will give you needed value.

 The ones that bash other languages on the mailing list for their prefered 
 language should provide good comparisons and not just make false statements

That would be valid if I would 'bash other languages', but I just
responded to your claim that Perl has advanced modules which are not
available for Python, esp. in web frameworks, as I find it one of
areas where Python shines most.
Sure Python has drawbacks, esp. its performance and poor threads
support (GIL), but flexibility and modules of all flavors and types
are not among them. Introduction of parameter annotations should make
these modules even greater, once python 3.x is widely adopted.

-- 
With best regards,
Daniel Kluev
-- 
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
...
Can it also set the current locale, for example romanian, and print the 
name of the current month?

...something like t1.date.set_locale('ro').month_name?


There is separate module for date localization. You can pass datetime
object to it and it will give you needed value.



Aha, so with other words that ORM doesn't have that feature.
DBIX::Class also use the DateTime module, but it can use it directly, 
without needing to write more code for that, and it can also return 
localized dates.



The ones that bash other languages on the mailing list for their prefered 
language should provide good comparisons and not just make false 
statements


That would be valid if I would 'bash other languages', but I just
responded to your claim that Perl has advanced modules which are not



No you haven't responded because you haven't shown any thing that can be 
done by the web framework and the ORM you are praising but can't be done by 
Catalyst and DBIx::Class, however I have shown you that DBIx::Class can 
return DateTime objects directly, without needing to load the DateTime 
module manually and to initialize the DateTime object manually...


And don't take my words out of the context, because I have also answered to 
another list member that was bashing Perl without offering other helpful 
information than just that kind of jokes which are usually made by teenagers 
under 30.


Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Ulrich Eckhardt

Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 Somebody told that C# and Objective C are good languages. They might be
 good, but they are proprietary, and not only that they are proprietary,
 but they need to be ran under platforms that cannot be used freely, so
 from the freedom point of view, Perl, Ruby, Python and Java are the ways
 to go.

Ahem, is this Java the language that a certain, well-known service provider 
is getting screwed over hard currently, because they forgot to read the 
fineprint in the declaration of freedom? And this Objective C, isn't this 
the language that GCC had support for since before it properly supported 
C++, and that on a multitude of targets?

I'm probably just confusedly feeding flames here, but I like it snug and 
warm. (:

Uli

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Geschäftsführer: Thorsten Föcking, Amtsgericht Hamburg HR B62 932

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Duncan Booth

Ulrich Eckhardt ulrich.eckha...@dominolaser.com wrote:

 Ahem, is this Java the language that a certain, well-known service
 provider is getting screwed over hard currently, because they forgot
 to read the fineprint in the declaration of freedom?

That would be the case where the plaintiff has been ordered to drop all but 
3 of their 132 claims? It isn't at all obvious yet who is going to be 
'screwed over hard'.

-- 
Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Octavian Rasnita orasn...@gmail.com wrote:
 From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
 Aha, so with other words that ORM doesn't have that feature.
 DBIX::Class also use the DateTime module, but it can use it directly,
 without needing to write more code for that, and it can also return
 localized dates.

Once again. ORMs return _python builtin type_. Localization is not
their responsibility, and plugging it there is code bloat, rather than
feature. Sure you may ask ORM to handle JSONRPC requests on its own,
but ORM responsibility is to map RDBMS features to language objects.
All good python packages limit their functionality to specific field,
so you could choose one you prefer for each different task
independently.

 without needing to load the DateTime module manually and to initialize the 
 DateTime object manually...

This is basically stating that you didn't read the code I posted.
Where did you ever find initialize the DateTime object manually?
Sorry, but its pointless to discuss anything if you don't want to even
read properly examples you receive.


-- 
With best regards,
Daniel Kluev
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread John Bokma

Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 That said, though, I still do not believe in Python's philosophy of
 significant whitespace. I like to be able, if I choose, to put one
 entire logical unit on one line, such that it can be commented out
 with a single comment marker, 

Use an editor that can with a single command comment out a selection
(and revert this), like Emacs.


-- 
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Blog: http://johnbokma.com/Perl Consultancy: http://castleamber.com/
Perl for books:http://johnbokma.com/perl/help-in-exchange-for-books.html
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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

2011-05-23 Thread Terry Reedy


On 5/23/2011 4:49 AM, Octavian Rasnita wrote:


But let's remember from what this discussion started. This is not a
Python critique, because each language has its own ways.
I just wanted to show that the fact that there is more than one way to
do it in Perl and that there is a single way in Python are just
buzzwords,


Agreed. The latter is simply incorrect for Python and I don't know why 
people say that. The statement from the Zen of Python is as follows:

There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
where 'it' is some reasonable common operation. This is a statement of 
*intent* that is opposed to All possible ways of doing things should be 
included. The key word that people too often omit is *obvious* (once 
one learns Python). There are usually, of necessity, multiple ways to do 
something, but for common operations, there should be one way that is 
obvious to the experienced Python programmer.


For instance, if you want to process the items of a collections, you can 
use normal recursion, tail recursion, while iteration, or for iteration. 
For the first three, you can use explicit or implicit conditions for 
flow control. (Implicit conditions are by try-except.) One can use 
various access methods to get the items. However, the one obvious, 
compact, and efficient way is 'for item in collection:'. This works with 
*any* collection with a proper __iter__ method.\


People accustomed to using tail recursion for this in other languages 
sometimes request that tail-call space optimization be added to make 
tail recursion a second 'obvious' way. Guido has refused because 1) 
there are real problems with the idea and 2) one obvious way is enough.


Similarly, the obvious way to define a function is a def statement. One 
alternative, which Guido allowed to be added for the specific purpose of 
passing simple functions as arguments in function calls, is a lambda 
expression. Guido has rejected requests to expand lambda expressions to 
general function definitions. Again, there are real problems and one 
obvious way is enough.


 because this was an example where in Python there are many

ways to do it while in Perl there is a single way used usually, which is
also more simple.


Here I disagree. As I replied before, you are either ignoring the 
obvious Python way or talking about a rare need.


--
Terry Jan Reedy

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

From: Terry Reedy tjre...@udel.edu
 On 5/23/2011 4:49 AM, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 
 But let's remember from what this discussion started. This is not a
 Python critique, because each language has its own ways.
 I just wanted to show that the fact that there is more than one way to
 do it in Perl and that there is a single way in Python are just
 buzzwords,
 
 Agreed. The latter is simply incorrect for Python and I don't know why 
 people say that. The statement from the Zen of Python is as follows:
 There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
 where 'it' is some reasonable common operation. This is a statement of 
 *intent* that is opposed to All possible ways of doing things should be 
 included. The key word that people too often omit is *obvious* (once 
 one learns Python). There are usually, of necessity, multiple ways to do 
 something, but for common operations, there should be one way that is 
 obvious to the experienced Python programmer.

Yes you are right. And it is exactly the same in case of experienced Perl 
programmers.

There is even a Perl book regarding the best practices, with many 
recommendations for the obvious way to do various things, and there is the 
module Perl::Critic with its command line percritic that follows those best 
practices very closely, so it is also just a buzzword that there is more than 
one way to do it for experienced Perl programmers.


  because this was an example where in Python there are many
 ways to do it while in Perl there is a single way used usually, which is
 also more simple.
 
 Here I disagree. As I replied before, you are either ignoring the 
 obvious Python way or talking about a rare need.


I was talking about the method of creating a dictionary from an array which is 
much shorter and clear in Perl than in Python, and if you are using this very 
rarely, others might need to use it often.

Octavian



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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?


From: Daniel Kluev dan.kl...@gmail.com
a = [1,2]
dict([a])

Yes, but

d = dict([a])

is not so nice as

$d = @a;

because it has exactly those numerous number of params and brackets which is 
used as a reason for bashing Perl and an aditional dict word.


Octavian

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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?