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What is Python?

Tim Hammerquist tim at degree.ath.cx
Wed Sep 20 12:50:15 EDT 2000 
Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Tim Hammerquist" <tim at degree.ath.cx> wrote:
> > Actually, I find myself preferring constant flames to all this "ly y'rs"
> > and "<wink>" stuff.  Maybe I'm just not in the spirit.
> 
> Although I think of myself as an ex-Perl'ist, I second the motion -- too
> much cutesy posturing around here.  Monty Python's humour wasn't like
> this, IMHO...

Phew!  Glad I'm not alone!  Another pro-Python point: most of those in
clpm are so proud they have to go with the crowd or risk being
questioned in their loyalties.  Rather cultish, I admit, but it's the
language (yes, Perl) that I love, not the newsgroup...thank god!

> As one of Python's aesthetic principles is "explicit is better
> than implicit", one wouldn't want to rely on implicit looping
> and/or printing.  Besides, it's just not a one-liner-culture.

Which is exactly what I included in my list of Python advantages.  This
is one of Python's many strengths and something I definitely value and
enjoy.  Still, I do like to test myself and see just how much one line
of Perl can do.  Purely frivilous but thoroughly enjoyable.  =)

> Incidentally, I think I'd have gone for concision in the Perl
> version -- definitely a value in ITS culture -- by using
>     print if
> in lieu of the more verbose
>     next unless
> (and the no-implicit-printing flag), although this would no
> doubt have the unfortunate side effect of making the code a
> lot more transparent -- but a saving of FOUR characters is
> just too good to pass up, isn't it?

I considered that, but if I did that, I wouldn't have been able to use
that extra cryptic -p option.  =)

Besides, the difference between our algorithms is a neglible amount of
clock-cycles.  Each of Perl's much-ridiculed "idioms" is optimized, so
the 'unless' conditional is as fast as the 'if', and the -p switch is
more optimized that a traditional 'print'.

I much appreciated your point of view, however.

Cheers.
-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>

Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.
	-- Heinrich Heine
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