Python and Ruby

[Jonathan Gardner]

On Feb 1, 6:21 pm, Nobody <nob... at nowhere.com> wrote:
>
> You don't need to know the entire language before you can use any of it
> (if you did, Python would be deader than a certain parrot; Python's dark
> corners are *really* dark).
>

I'm curious. What dark corners are you referring to? I can't think of
any. Especially with the direction Python 3 is going, it seems like
even the slightly dim corners are being rounded away.

I can explain, in an hour, every single feature of the Python language
to an experienced programmer, all the way up to metaclasses,
__getattribute__, __new__ and __get__. These are the darkest corners I
know of, and these are not at all dark. It takes a few paragraphs of
documentation to explain all the details of each these features. I
hold the entire Python language in my head, and I can still remember
when my next meeting is.

Compare that to something like Haskell, where you have to read entire
books before you truly understand what monads are actually doing
behind the scenes, and how Haskell actually interprets and runs your
program, or to understand what the esoteric error messages that crop
up are actually caused be.

Yes, there are people that know how to do stuff in Haskell. These are
really smart people, the cream of the crop, so to speak. But that
doesn't make Haskell a simple language.