Is Python the Esperanto of programming languages?

[Andy Jewell]

On Thursday 20 Mar 2003 12:40 am, Jack Diederich wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 04:17:43PM -0800, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> > Jack Diederich wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 10:33:30PM +0000, Andy Jewell wrote:
> > > > Just thought I'd throw the cat amongst the pigeons...  I just
> > > > occurred to me
> > > > that Python is designed to be elegant from the ground-up, and takes
> > > > many of
> > > > the 'best' features of many other programming languages, but always
> > > > with
> > > > elegance in mind, similarly to Esperanto, ...
> > >
> > > -1 Troll.
> > >
> > >   I would wager there are more people using python than know
> > > Esperanto!
> >
> > Even if true (which isn't that easy of a call, since both figures are
> > extremely hard to estimate reliably), what's that got to do with it?
> > The comment was clearly intended as a compliment for Python.  Where's
> > the troll?
>
> Saying "good, great, thoughtful, best intentions - exactly like this widely
> heckeled massive failure who's crowning acheivement was a movie starring
> William Shatner."  hardly strikes me as a compliment.

Ok, Jack, you've got me there.  Got me confused, that is.

1) I don't consider Esperanto a failure - people DO use it.  I may not be one 
of them, but having learned a teensy-weensy bit about it, I beleive that the 
*IDEA* behind it is good.  Having taught English reading and writing to my 
children (who are in any case English) was hard enough.  Strangely, teaching 
my eldest, aged 7, Python is proving /far/ easier.  Esperanto is far easier 
to learn than English, and I am told, most other spoken languages - by 
design.  I don't think it has a ternary operator, though :-))

2) What film was that?  Really - I didn't know there *was* a film which 
featured Esperanto.  That's probably because it starred William Shatner...

3) I think Python is the best thing since Bubblegum, Sliced Bread, Oberon etc. 
etc.  I'm serious: I REALLY LIKE PYTHON.  I use it at work and "play" totally 
out of choice.  If I was trolling, I'd have said something like...  No, 
actually, I won't say it: it would give you more ammo than you need :-)