gsteff wrote: > I'm a computer science student, and have recently been trying to > convince the professor who teaches the programming language design > course to consider mentioning scripting languages in the future. Along > those lines, I've been trying to think of features of Python, and > scripting languages in general, that can't be found in older languages, > and have been having a surprising amount of trouble. Dynamic typing > can be found in Smalltalk, the module concept can be found in Ada, > functional parameters and the dynamic creation of functions can be > found in Lisp. The indentation-based syntax seems to be unique, but > that's not really what I'm looking for. So I'm wondering, what is > innovative about Python, either in its design or implementation? Or is > its magic really just in combining many useful features of prior > languages in an unusually pleasant way? > > Greg >
I find that development in python is much faster than anything else. But one of the noticeable features, for me and presumably computer science students, is the pseudocode-python translation: I've been working through a CS textbook to train for the IOI, and noticed how much my python implementations look like the textbook's pseudocode (whereas the C++ versions look nothing like the pcode). If anything, python is _more_ expressive - where list comprehensions and generators are the natural way of doing things, the textbook has to kludge because its target audience is C++, Java and Pascal programmers. --Max -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
