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Programmer-Wanna-Be (Is Python for me?)

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 12 04:25:09 EDT 2000 
"Tim Hammerquist" <tim at degree.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:slrn8ua6rr.mg.tim at degree.ath.cx...
> Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > c. gvim, but that's because I'm somewhat weird (VI and its
> >     relatives are soundly hated by most editor-users and deeply
> >     loved by a small but vocal minority of us, see www.vim.org)
>
> What, vi-users are a minority over here?  Heck, I might as well just go
> back to clpm!  *j/k*  "soundly hated by most editor-users?"  How many of
> this alleged majority even know what vi/vim is?  I do have to agree
> though: we are quite vocal.  =)

Or, at least, vi-cal.


> > it must be admitted that no tool, for any other language, does
> > it as well as MS's VB editor [not even other MS tools]).
>
> <must resist...must resist...must resist...must resist... oh well...>
>
> No harm intended, Alex.  I agree that the VB IDE is quite easy to use,

Note that my claim was very specific: 'intellisense' (editor help, by
opening a tooltip or choice/listbox at appropriate points) is implemented
very well (near-flawlessly, in fact) in VB (since 5.0, I believe) and
less well (although still usefully) in other tools (VC++6, PythonWin,
IDLE, ...).

There is no implicit nor explicit claim about 'ease of use'=='power'
in the general case.

Some aspects of 'power' contribute to 'ease', others do not (and may
in fact make for beginners' "difficulty").  "intellisense", when well
implemented, gives power AND ease.  In particular, it can minimize
the 'ergonomic effort' (amount of keystrokes &c) -- dramatically so
when you're calling a function/method you don't know by heart, but
quite substantially even when you DO know it inside and out...

> but:
>
> if 'ease of use' == 'power':
> Win98_power = Linux_power + WinNT_power

And, to cap it off, I also disagree that Win98 is as 'easy to
use' as all that.  Comparing similar to similar (98 to NT), in
particular, I find many administrative tasks easier to handle
on my NT box at work (practically single-user) than on my 98
box at home (ditto).  Try setting some environment variable, for
example... 'black magic' in '98, quite easy in NT.  The widespread
*perception* that 98 is easier is, IMHO, a misperception, and
comes from only using its actual power (which is not awesome,
but not quite negligible either) only very partially/superficially.


Alex
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