Rue the day...

[Martijn Faassen]

Rony <rony.steelandt at bucodi.com> wrote:
> "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1012274265.29834.python-list at python.org>...
>> Guys, I know we have the reputation as the nicest bunch of nerds on
>> the 'Net, but Rue is consuming more of our time and bandwidth than spam.
>> Despite his comments to the contrary, no one on this list gives him
>> any credence.

> Yes it's true that there is a nice bunch here. BUT what keeps me
> amazing here, is  :

> 1. How you keep defending the Python language over and over again.
> Don't understand me wrong, Python is a VERY good language and we are
> using it for years now, like a lot of you. But each time some guy asks
> here a question like 'Should i use Python of Perl' or 'Python or C for
> a real world application' evrybody here starts here to defend Python.

I more usually list a number of factors that may influence this decision.
Of course those factors would be frequently tilted towards the use
of Python, as I do believe it is in many circumstances a good choice.

Anyway, I've seen others go along those lines too.
 
> IMHO this is useless, since allready the question is stupid...

It may be somewhat ignorant to ask 'should I use Python or X' without
much qualifying context, but one has to start exploring somewhere.
I'd agree some context is useful ('for games?' 'for accounting 
applications?' 'for web applications?' etc).

Anyway, asking such a question in a newsgroup may get you some interesting
perspectives that could help you explore the issues involved better than you 
could before.

Of course, if you ask 'Should I use X or Y' in comp.lang.X you're most likely
going to get people in favor of X speaking up. But even that can help
you. Here for instance you'll often hear: 'X is good except if you want
extreme speed, but then you can do this and that', while over on 
comp.lang.c you might hear things more like 'X is good, some say some other
language is better for higher level abstractions but you can do this and
that'. You'll have learned something.

Then again, one could've done a simple web search and learned the same. :)

> The language you want to choose depends on a lot of items and not only
> wether you have to use brackets of indents to structure code block, or
> to have to declare variables or not. Even the developmentspeed issues
> like you see here often depends on a lot of things, we have as an
> example 2 C goeroes in house that develop at the speed of other python
> applications, only the applications will be different and THAT is the
> reason that some application is written in C and others in Python...
> So if someone asks if he should use Python , the only real answer
> could be 'Have a look at it, try it and decide... you're a big boy'.

Yes, that, and set them on the way. You can list strong points of Python
(clarity and expressiveness), and weaker points (speed).

> 2. How you keep answerring the same questions over and over again.
> Style 'WIch IDE to use to develop with python' or worse 'Does python
> have a compiler'. If you think this is just a small part of the
> question here, take google and do a search on IDE or compiler on this
> group.

Hey, but these are fun holy war questions! Besides from usefulness I 
suspect many here *like* the whole advocacy aspects of this. And of course
in comp.lang.python it's very frequent some thread on some boring issue
that's been doing over and over again will grow some interesting
outcroppings on how morality evolved or how there could be life on
other planets and why the capslock ended up in the bizarre place it is
today (why, anyway?).

I'd like to thank this thread for pointing me at Tim Rue by the way. I vaguely
recall having seen him post somewhere (or perhaps his web page) many years
ago; I wonder where..  Seems to be active in the amiga community (but
I never was in that community, so that doesn't help me much :).

Regards,

Martijn
--
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?