Abandoning Python

[John Lee]

Dan Stromberg <drsalists <at> gmail.com> writes:

> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 8:49 AM, John J Lee <jjl <at> pobox.com> wrote:
> </troll>
> I still like Python after using it for over a decade, but there are
> things I don't like.
> What are your favourite up-and-coming languages of the moment?
> Here's my wishlist (not really in any order):
>  * A widely used standard for (optional) interface declaration -- or
>    something better.  I want it to be easier to know what interface an
>    object has when reading code, and which objects provide that
>    interface.
> 
> 
> I do miss this sometimes, but pylint takes things far enough for me. 

Pylint?  Does it provide some kind of guessed-at-type that has been integrated 
with IDEs?

[...]
> And here I thought Python had pretty good functional programming facilities.
> What do you miss?AFAIK, DBC in terms of "if condition: raise AssertionError"
> (or assert).What _is_ the "etc"?
[...more of the same...]

You tell me: I'm here to fish for interesting pointers rather than to 
evangelize.  I mention those specific things as examples because I know they 
have often been both the focus of research (well, perhaps not integration of 
queries), and pain points in software development.  It's not plausible to me 
that there is not room for major improvement, but in any case the only way to 
know is to try.


>  * Better refactoring tools, better code analysis tools (lint, search,
>    etc.).
> 
> I find pylint excellent.  My idea of a refactoring tool is vim's n.n.n.,  but 
have you looked at PyCharm? 

In this thread, I'm asking about the views of Python programmers on languages 
other than Python.  Thanks for the link, though (does PyCharm provide reliable 
refactoring tools that are useable from emacs?).


>  * An even larger user base, contributing more and better free and
>    commercial software.
> 
> Gee, you want a scripting language with a larger userbase? 

I don't want a scripting language, necessarily.


John