>It is not clear that the first (cheapest best) human->computer language >is a computer language, though if two were orthonormal >in comparison >to life, Python's fine. Not my first.
The utterly dry, closed, logical, definitive, hierarchical, consistent, determinate nature of a computer language is the only thing that will facilitate anything useful on something as utterly stupid (and not to mention logical, definite and determined) as a computer. I mean it, computers are /really/ stupid. They're literally stupider than a bug. We just like things we can control. The requisites I have for a computer language are: Efficiency (speed) Elegance of syntax Powerful (conceptual-wise) abstractions Python has delicious abstractions that make doing a lot of things really easy and fun to think about. Stackless Python adds even more to that with continuations. Also Python's dynamic (another aspect of being powerful conceptual-wise) But most of all, I love its syntax. Guido is the awesome. (BTW, I won't even use any language that uses := for assignment. I just refuse. I don't care what the language has.) The speed/efficiency issue depends on the task at hand. For most things I use Python. But assembly isn't out of the question, and it's fun to code in. I also find C/C++ an elegant language. Most things just don't need that speed. And Python is 50 times easier to code in than C/C++ and 1000 times easier to debug in. I also like C#. My ideal language would be a natively compiling cross between C++ and Python. Objects declared with a type would be statically typed, objects not declared with a type would be dynamically typed. There would also be keywords to declare that class names won't be reassigned and class attributes won't be deleted. Those attributes would be referred to by offset, not hast table keys. f -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
