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How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)

Rainy sill at optonline.net
Sat Jul 14 21:05:12 EDT 2001 
On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:15:19 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> Rainy wrote:
>> 
>> On 13 Jul 2001 11:59:09 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
>> > sill at optonline.net (Rainy) writes:
>> >
>> >> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>> >> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>> >> in perl :-/."
>> >
>> > And that's when you reached for your revolver?
>> 
>> No, the script was fairly short, maybe a hundred lines. It was also the kind of
>> script that you write once and never have to extend, so doing it in perl wasn't
>> a problem. 
> 
> I understand what you mean here, but I'm not sure I believe in the
> idea that there really are scripts you write once and never have to extend.

Well, there *are* such scripts, but the problem is, you don't know if the one
you're writing is going to be one of these or not. I made an educated guess
that the one in question will be write-once and was right, and so wasn't too
annoyed to rewrite it in perl :P.

> 
> That's why I value Python's maintainability so much: effectively
> every program or script we write has to be extended, even if just 
> in the first few months of use.
> 
> With Python, we regular hand off 100 line programs from one person 
> to another for completion and maintenance, as people are available.  
> I think there's even one each of us has contributed to over the 
> last year.  Contrary to what you might imagine, it has become
> progressively cleaner and easier to understand, rather than growing
> into its own little tar pit of a program.

I totally agree.



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