"Dave Benjamin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Guido gave a good, long interview, available at IT Conversations, as was > recently announced by Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! The audio clips are available
[snip] > - Java: the usual static vs. dynamic, static analysis vs. unit testing > arguments. Guido says that there's such a small amount of problems that > can be caught at compile time, and even the smallest amount of unit > testing would also catch these problems. "The blindness of that > [static] > position... escapes me." Three years ago, this was a viable arguement. Two years ago, it was beginning to show difficulties. Today anyone who makes it can be accused of having their head in the sand [1]. What's being ignored is that type information is useful for other things than compile type checking. The major case in point is the way IDEs such as IntelliJ and Eclipse use type information to do refactoring, code completion and eventually numerous other things. A Java programmer using IntelliJ or Eclipse can eliminate the advantage that Python used to have, and possibly even pull ahead. The only thing that is even vaguely similar in the Python community is Bycycle Repair Man, and, to be brutal about it, it sucks in comparison with what either Eclipse or IntelliJ can do. I agree with Guido's point later in the interview that type inference is the way to go, and that it's very difficult to retrofit it to an existing language. Difficult does not mean impossible though. The place to start is to go through the standard objects and make sure all return values make sense. I'll throw out one very simple example in the string library. The index() and find() methods, and their variants, suffer from a bad case of non-obviousness inherited from the C library. A very simple replacement would fix this. -------------------------------- findall([maxfind,] sub, [start, [end]]) findall returns a list (possibly a tuple) of the beginning index of each substring which matches sub. If there are no matches, an empty list is returned. At most maxfind indexes are returned. start and end have the same meaning as in the existing find and index methods. -------------------------------- This version works intuitively with if statements (an empty list is false), goes directly into for statements, can be implemented as an iterator, and is only less efficient by a constant (creation of the list) if the maxfind parameter is used. It never throws an exception (unless the parameter list has the wrong types). Its an example of a method that can be used cleanly with a type inferencer, while the index and find methods cannot. [snip] John Roth [1] I'm well aware that ostritches do not stick their heads in the sand to avoid looking at distressing things, such as advancing predators. It is, however, a useful metaphor. > > Cheers, > Dave -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
