OT: Crazy Programming

[Chris]

In article <9LJD8.34714$CN3.1229512 at news2.tin.it>,
 Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:

> Chris wrote:
>         ...
> > While I enjoy Python - and I do... it opned up the world of OO
> > programming for me - I think there's almost a danger in things being too
> > obvious.  Creativity can be a messy business, but ultimately it leads to
> > better places.
> 
> The Python culture, by not particularly valuing "creativity" at the
> lowest levels of programming, just frees up creative juices for use
> where you get the best returns on them -- overall system architecture,
> algorithms, sophisticated data structures.

I agree, and I see this kind of debate happening in the Perl community, 
with questions regularly asked about high-level tasks.  These too get 
diverse answers, and I think it's because the language ingrains a 
certain curiousity in programmers about whether or not there might just 
be another way of getting these a little quicker and/or a little more 
directly.

In the end I'm not trying to say Python's approach is bad.  Quite the 
contrary, I like Python quite a bit, and have defended it amongst Perl 
devotees.  I just think that there is an advantage to a bit of 
ambiguity, at times.

Then again, maybe I'm just caught up in Perl6 anticipation.  :-)