Java vs Python

[Tim Rowe]

In article <392FF563.403AD31F at home.com>, ivanlan at home.com (Ivan Van 
Laningham) wrote:

> Hi All--
> faatdilac at my-deja.com wrote:
> > 
> 
> [bobbit]
> 
> > It's a thankless & shameless attitude to say that C is not generally
> > useful while C has been feeding generations of software professionals.
> > 
> > The name Dennis M. Ritchie shines as long as Perl, Tcl/Tk, Python 
> > exist.
> > Show me a commercially successful language compiler developed in any 
> > of
> > the scripting languages. Show me an OS developed in any of the
> > scripting languages.
> > 
> > The software world would be much poorer without C.
> > 
> 
> I started programming back in the 60s with 1401 Autocoder.  I moved to
> COBOL, and thought, "how wonderful!" because it was *so* much easier.
> 
> I discovered unix and C in 1983, and was *overwhelmed* by the a) 
> sensibility of unix; and b) the power and expressiveness of C. 
> 
> Are there any OSs written in COBOL?  I think not.

Isn't this a Procrustean, "one-size-fits-all" argument, though? C was 
designed as a system programming language, COBOL wasn't. Next time you 
fly, hope all the critical software is in (Spark) Ada, Modula2 or some 
such, not C. Horses for courses. I can program in Pascal, C++, Visual 
Basic and FORTH; I used to be able to do FORTRAN but I've forgotten it all 
now (and my FORTH is getting rusty!). I'm now adding Python because I see 
it usefully filling a gap; I choose the language based on which is best 
/for/ /the/ /job/ /in/ /hand/. There is surely no other sense of "best" 
language!