Re: Scripting language takes a silicon turn

[Chris Marrin <chris@...>]

Lisa Parratt wrote:
> Vijay Aswadhati wrote:
>
> > Seems to me that the major design choice in picking Python is based
> > on the availablity of 'generators'. I only dabbled in Python a long
> > time ago; I wonder what is so 'brilliant' about Python.
>
>
>  From what I can tell, such features are only popular amongst people who 
> don't see them for what they are - an ad-hoc, informally-specified 
> bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. ;)
>
> Personally, I'm of the opinion that in real world usage, the white space 
> issue is enough to kill the languages utility stone dead, let alone the 
> other flaws it and it's creators glaringly contain.

But you can make those arguments for evey language. I don't like the way 
Python defines block scope either, but I also don't see why a language 
would use '<' for comparison, but use 'and' for boolean operations. I 
can see no reason for these choices (in both Python and Lua) other than, 
"let's be different from C". Of course, this arcane syntax is certainly 
what has drawn plenty of converts to both languages, even though it 
should be the rich object-oriented constructs (for Python) and the 
extremely efficient interpreter (for Lua)!

--
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"As a general rule,don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell"'