On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 11:15:54 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Alex Martelli) wrote:
>Also, you keep talking about "the core python team" on the basis, it >would appear, of reading one document by Guido. Have you bothered doing >a MINIMUM of homework, such as, looking at > http://www.amk.ca/diary/archives/cat_python.html >and specifically AMK's entry for September 30? This complaint about "syntax cruft" is really weird, as while browsing through the old and new docs I got the impression that Python hasn't really changed so much as just added new, and mostly well-chosen features. What's not to like in sets for instance?! However, I do have to concede that Python as environment still has a way to go - not the language features are missing, but better _standard_ IDE and debugger. E.g. Pythonwin debugger sometimes simply dies on me, I have no idea why. This is not to criticize the great work that you guys are doing and the results of which we get FOR FREE (something in principle I don't believe), but merely to indicate that Python has grown and so did the expectations. People tend to get spoilt: they expect to find in a free product the gazillion of VS-like features. :-) As we say here, "appetite tends to grow as you eat". E.g. right now I would kill for a standard, built-in matrix type that would be as flexible as lists and dictionaries are in Python, so that I could slurp the whole CSV file or some other table in one instruction into a matrix that could accomodate data types likes strings and floats (just like dictionaries do - just, say, declare, "column 1 of matrix contains strings, and please convert the values in column 2 into floats"), and then easily do some fancy matrix transformations. Clean and expressive syntax plus flexibility of lists and dictionaries are the main reasons I got into Python. Where else could I do smth as neat as writing a CSV header with: DictWriterInstance.writerow(dict(zip(titles,titles))) Note I didn't have to do any operations myself: all that was necessary for me as a programmer was to figure out how to connect the Lego pieces together. We need more of this sort of expressive power in a standard library and built-in types. This is the subconscious power of attraction in Python I think. :-) I'm not a language designer. I don't know how to get there. I just would love to see more of that around. To summarize, it's not the language that is would be nice to develop further. Those are: - more of the rich, flexible data types - more extensive standard debugger - possibly standard IDE with more features that are typically found in commercial products <now the evil me sits back, relaxes and watches how properly motivated Alex and others get to work> No, really, guys, great thanks for all that work. -- Real world is perfectly indifferent to lies that are the foundation of leftist "thinking". -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
