I got this comment in my previous post with the screencast about writing Python plugins for Hildon Desktop.
There simply is nothing cool about python. It’s VB on Linux, and a horrible language with horrible OO bolted loosely on the side (split/join/len illustrates it beautifully). It’s worst sin however is that because it looks easy, really bad programmers unleash things on the world. Like VB. (Anonymous)
WTF!? How can someone see Python this way? As a counter-argument for this “worst sin”, this nice article by Paul Graham comes to my mind. :-)
“Goddammit, programming ought to be really difficult, so that ordinary people can’t do it and all code is really high quality.” Yeah, that’ll help us. :)
To be honest python has (had) its warts. From the top of my head:
– There are functions that should have been methods (len/str etc)
– Scoping
– The “self” parameter – convention.
– In the past you couldn’t subclass base classes of python (dictionaries, lists, …).
– range should have become an iterator by now (will be fixed in Python 3k)
– I believe that getattr, setattr should be operations on a a dictionary
Nevertheless the above, i like python a lot, and use it whenever i can.
The anonymous poster is obviously clueless and hasn’t used Python for anything more serious than a “Hello, world”.
I do not understand the point about len() being a function rather than a method. Would you people also like sqrt to be a method? How about add/sub/mul/div?
By the way, str() is not a function, it’s a constructor call in newer versions of Python. I find it pretty natural to see str(42) meaning “create a new string representing the number 42”.
I can see some similarities between VB and Python and I can understand why someone would make a comparison between them. However, it seems that this is being used as an end unto itself to bash Python, ignoring what the bad aspects of VB actually _are_.
I normally use Ruby because it has all of the features Python has and is nicer to use, although if I had to write everything in Python instead I doubt I’d be much less happy.
Here is a discussion that I had with a friend of mine about some of the bits of Python that I do find annoying:
http://fragglet.livejournal.com/6201.html
He probably meant PHP when refering to VB