Whitespace as syntax (was Re: Python Rocks!)

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:

> Weirdo syntaxes also do not help. Python's syntax is a little weird. But
> Smalltalk, Lisp and (now) Rebol seem to go out of their way to
> antagonize Algol-family-trained programmers.
>
> If it takes more than fifteen minutes to retrain the eyes from the old
> language to the new language, most programmers will never make the jump.
> Why would they, when there are already too many languages to learn that
> do not demand eyeball retraining?

This is very true - in fact, when I first took a look at Python I
thought the syntax was so weird I didn't have to take a second look.
It was Neel who told me not to be silly. After that I had the whitespace
problem - for about five minutes. A month of happily coding CGI scripts
later I thought that Python didn't have the rich variety of GUI toolkits
I needed... Seriously, the only problem I still have, occasionally, is
grasping the lazy typing concept. I like to declare my data structures,
and I often create classes as if they were Pascal records or COM
interfaces ;-).

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org