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Python's biggest compromises

Anthony_Barker anthony_barker at hotmail.com
Thu Jul 31 09:55:52 EDT 2003 
I have been reading a book about the evolution of the Basic
programming language. The author states that Basic - particularly
Microsoft's version is full of compromises which crept in along the
language's 30+ year evolution.

What to you think python largest compromises are?

The three that come to my mind are significant whitespace, dynamic
typing, and that it is interpreted - not compiled. These three put
python under fire and cause some large projects to move off python or
relegate it to prototyping.

Whitespace is an esthetic preference that make Andrew Hunt and David
Thomas (of Pragmatic Programmer fame) prefer Ruby. Personally, I love
it - but I can see why some people might not like it (30 years of
braces).

Dynamic typing causes the most fuss. I like Guido's answer to the
question -
> "Doesn't dynamic typing cause more errors to creep into the code 
because you catch them later than compile time?". 
> "No, we use Unit Testing in Zope". 

That said, obvious Basic compromised by using things such as "Option
Explicit", thereby allowing both dynamic and more static style
variables. Yahoo groups moved from python to C due to dynamic typing.

Non-compiled - obviously there are times when performance matters more
than other things. Google I believe uses python to prototype (or used)
and then turns to c++ for heavy lifting.

What about immutable strings? I'm not sure I understand Guido's
preference for them.

Anthony
http://xminc.com/anthony
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