Is Python the Esperanto of programming languages?

[Carl Banks]

Isaac To wrote:
>>>>>> "Andy" == Andy Jewell <andy at wild-flower.co.uk> writes:
> 
>    Andy> Hi Pythonistas, Just thought I'd throw the cat amongst the
>    Andy> pigeons...  I just occurred to me that Python is designed to be
>    Andy> elegant from the ground-up, and takes many of the 'best' features
>    Andy> of many other programming languages, but always with elegance in
>    Andy> mind, similarly to Esperanto, which is designed to be a 'regular'
>    Andy> (i.e. elegant) human language, and draws its vocabulary from many
>    Andy> different spoken languages.
> 
> As a native Chinese speaker, I find Esperanto *far* from elegant (with a lot
> of rather stupid redundancy like the need to match the case of adjectives
> and nouns, or even just having the concept of tense). =)

Ok, but I wonder if Esperanto is still easier to learn than natural
European languages.  I would guess it has the same odd (to you)
syntax, but at least there are no pesky exceptions.

(BTW, the modern inflections indicating verbal tenses were probably
separate adverbs around ten thousand years ago, in a language that
would evolve into Proto-Indo-European in another four thousand years.
Of course, that language could have had its own tenses, but it could
have been tenseless like Chinese.)


-- 
CARL BANKS