UserLinux chooses Python as "interpretive language" of choice

[Hans Nowak]

Ville Vainio wrote:

> Most importantly, why would anyone even care? Ability to optionally
> invoke a "call" operation on an object implicitly seems utterly
> worthless to me. It has the feel of perl philosophy (regexps in
> language syntaxm anyone? ), and it's not the only instance in Ruby. I
> don't really like the Perl philosophy (like most of the people who
> "get" Python), and I don't really believe a language whose designers
> appreciate the perlisms poses a serious threat to Python. Not even if
> they got some things right.

Hmm, I looked at Ruby a few months ago, and while it has more similarities to 
Python than differences, its design philosophies are indeed very different.  As 
such, it seems less "clean" to me than Python (but anyone's MMV, of course). 
In some places it seems too "pure", in other places it adds a lot of extra 
syntax for special cases.  It's just different from Python, but I expect that 
many people don't care much about that.

The rise of Ruby may not be a good thing for Python, but I think that in the 
long run, it's good for scripting/dynamic languages as a whole.  Python gets 
another competitor, which wouldn't be possible if dynamic (agile?) languages 
were not a viable choice.  Enough people are interested in dynamic languages 
that there's room for another one.  So, in a way, it's a sign that people who 
use one of these languages (be it Python, Perl, Ruby) are on the right track.

As for switching... I like Ruby's code blocks (although not necessarily the way 
they are used), and maybe a few other small things, but I haven't seen anything 
that would make me seriously consider switching.

-- 
Hans (hans at zephyrfalcon.org)
http://zephyrfalcon.org/