Python questions from C/Perl/Java programmer

[Grant Griffin]

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [posted & mailed]
> 
> [Tom Biggs]
> > ...
> > I'm a fanatic Perl programmer but not to the exclusion of all else.
> > ...
> > Several Perl/C/Java programmers I know raved so about Python
> > that I just had to investigate.  I like what I've seen so far _very
> > much_.
> 
> Then you're not *really* a fanatic Perl programmer at heart -- so there's
> some hope for you yet <wink>.

Yup.  I think the heart of a true fanatic Perl programmer <<two sizes
too small>> is that of a tight-rope walker who works without a net
<<karl wallenda fell>>.  In the case of The Big Top, this makes for an
exciting show <<hoping karl falls>>, but programmers gets no extra
credit for it.
...

> After 10 years, you may end up like me:  I still enjoy *reading* funky Perl,
> but I personally never write it anymore except for cmdline one-liners.

For funky reading, I prefer Sandskrit <wink>.

> > And Perl's OO stuff is just ridiculous, a hasty slap-on-the-side kludge.

I guess I think of it more as a well-thought-out, very clever kludge. 
(BTW, Tim, do you think Larry blessed the addition of the "bless"
keyword or did they slip that one past him? <wink>)  Perl's OO seems
like a clever (if cumbersome) way to extend the capabilities of Perl 4
for purposes of OO <<still a kludge>>.

> Heh.  If you ask Larry, he'll you that Perl's OO implementation was largely
> inspired by Python's!  There are a *lot* of similarities under the covers.
> But I agree all the same:  "doing OO" in Perl5 is agonizing.

Yup.  Even as a veteran C++ programmer, I never could quite figure it
out <<never smoked dope>>.  (Then again, it could just be the "makes
sense only to people who already understand it" way Tom Christiansen
explained it in "Programming Perl". <wink>)  But now that I've learned
Python's approach to OO <<falling off a log>>, maybe Perl's will make
more sense <<or not>>.

...
> People who
> despise syntactic sugar are missing a great counter-example here (and,
> honest, Python's object.attr and Perl's $object->{attr} do (almost) exactly
> the same thing!  Python doesn't shove the implementation's dicts (hashes to
> you <wink>) in your face all the time, though -- but they're there if you
> ever do want to play with them directly).
> 
> > So you'll probably be hearing some newbie questions from me.
> > *After* I read the FAQ of course...
> 
> Cool!  c.l.py is a pretty friendly place, ask away.

BTW, *many* thanks to Guido, Tim and all for making it so: the leaders
set the tone.  Compared to Perl, both the language and the newsgroup are
*much* friendlier to newbies <<not a coincidence>>.  Specifically, I've
never once seen someone tell a newbie "Why don't you just grep the FAQ,
idiot?"--which is practically a mantra of leading personalities in
comp.lang.perl.misc (who shall remain nameless <<tchrist>>.)  (BTW, I
never figured out why bright guys like that can't understand that
newbies don't know how to "grep a FAQ" <<gesundheit!>>)

=g2
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation	      http://www.iowegian.com