Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 26 May 2011 16:03:58 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote:

> On 5/26/2011 11:36 AM, John Bokma wrote:
>> Ben Finney<ben at benfinney.id.au>  writes:
> 
>  >>>> [impolite comment not quoted]
>>>> Get a life. Or better, just fuck off and die. It will improve both
>>>> the world and the Python community, of which you are nothing but a
>>>> little, smelly shitstain.
>>>
>>> That abuse is entirely unwelcome in this community, against any
>>> person. Please desist.
>>
>> You should have spoken up sooner, especially as the spokes person of
>> "this" community. But every bully has is fan club.
> 
> I agree that the original impolite comment was just that -- impolite --
> and perhaps enough so that it should have been spoken out against. 

Okay, I've stayed silent while people criticize me long enough. What 
exactly did I say that was impolite? 

Is this one of those things where it is "impolite" to say certain things 
in public even though in private everyone knows they are true?

We all know that some people have adversarial views of all sorts of 
things, including computer languages. "My language of choice is better 
than your language of choice". Most of us can probably name examples, or 
if not, it wouldn't take much effort on Google to find them.

If we're honest to ourselves, we'd realise that we're all at least a 
*little bit* adversarial. XKCD's famous cartoon about "People are WRONG 
on the Internet!" is funny because we can so often relate to it. We 
really do think some languages are better than others, in objective ways 
as well as subjective, and want to "support our language". That's partly 
why we're here, to give back to the language that we enjoy using. We're 
just more nuanced about our opinion than the trolls.

And we also know that people keep going back to their language of choice 
for all sorts of reasons that aren't objective. Why do I keep going back 
to Pascal instead of C? I'll give you all sorts of objective reasons why 
I think Pascal is a better designed language, but the real reason is 
because it makes me comfortable. It was the first language I learned.

Objectively, I should just drop it and move on, but I'm going to keep 
tilting at those windmills hoping to turn the tide of popular opinion and 
see a mass migration of C coders to Pascal...

*cough*

John threw down a distinct challenge:

    if Python is really so much better than Python [sic] 
    readability wise, why do I have such a hard time dropping
    Perl and moving on?

Am I really the only one who can hear the "oh yeah smart guy" at the 
start of that sentence?

If this is one of those lines you're not allowed to cross, where 
everybody knows that people invest self-image in their job or choice of 
language ("dammit, I'm a *Python coder*, I'd never stoop to writing 
COBOL!" sort of thing) but you mustn't mention it because that would be 
impolite, well, screw that for a game of soldiers. Sometimes politeness 
is the grease that keeps society's wheels turning, and sometimes it's 
just blinkers that stops us from understanding ourselves and others.

If I got it wrong about John, oh well, I said it was a guess, and trying 
to get inside someone else's head is always a chancy business. But the 
fact that he responded so aggressively instead of saying "Ha, Freudian 
projection, much?" hints that maybe I hit a button. Or maybe I just ran 
into him on a bad day.

Projection? Yes, I cheerfully admit it. *My* self-image is partly "I am a 
Python coder", not an enterprise Java suit or a VB code monkey. It's more 
complicated than that, of course, but let's remember also that the Perl 
community is *full* of people who self-identify as "Just Another Perl 
Hacker".

John, I'd apologise if I thought I said something rude or nasty to you, 
but I don't, so I don't believe I have anything to apologise for. But I 
will say that I regret that you took it as an attack, and assure you that 
it was not meant that way.



-- 
Steven