Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 25 May 2011 17:30:48 -0400, thegist at nospam.net wrote:

> On 5/24/2011 1:39 PM, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote: [snip]
>> One of my favorite quotes (not sure if it was about Perl or APL) is "I
>> refuse to use a programming language where the proponents of it stick
>> snippets under each other's nose and say 'I bet you can't guess what
>> this does.'"
> I dunno. That sounds about like how most programming course exams are
> written, no?
> The point is that puzzling through arcane bits of code are crucial to
> learning
> any language. It's a valuable exercise.

You seem to miss the point that a good language shouldn't make it 
possible to write arcane code that needs to be puzzled out.

Although in fairness, what's arcane to me might be straightforward to 
you... and vice versa.

In that sense, there probably aren't any "good languages", because it is 
impractical to have a language that cannot be obfuscated in any way. 
Nevertheless, we can distinguish "less good" from "more good" in 
languages in the sense of readability.  The fact that some languages not 
just allow such obfuscation but encourage it makes the language great for 
puzzles but not so good for when you actually want to get work done and 
have to deal with code written by someone else. *Especially* if they're 
significantly smarter, or dumber, than you.

Worst of all is dealing with code written by somebody who *thinks* 
they're smarter but is actually dumber.



-- 
Steven