Does Python really follow its philosophy of "Readability counts"?

[Paul Rubin]

Michele Simionato <michele.simionato at gmail.com> writes:
> > there is no language that currently really works the right way,
> > but some of them including Python are (one hopes) moving in good
> > directions.
> 
> To be fair, this has been true for the last 50 years. If a language
> that works the right way really existed, CS would be dead and there
> would be no progress to make. Happily I think we will never end in
> that situation ;)

I'd say there was a time Lisp worked the right way, and a time C
worked the right way, and maybe a time Python worked the right way,
and for a while, Algol 60 was perfection embodied.  But times have
changed more than those languages have, so they no longer work the
right way.  The right way basically can never mean more than "the best
that can be done using current technology".  Right now, the stuff
happening in the programming-language research world is light years
beyond what us poor peons are using in everyday hacking, while we face
harder and harder challenges due to bigger and faster computers
leading to more complex software, and a vastly enlarged attack surface
exposed to internet security threats.

Have you looked at Tim Sweeney's talk that I mentioned in another post?

http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf