I'm a computer science student, and have recently been trying to convince the professor who teaches the programming language design course to consider mentioning scripting languages in the future. Along those lines, I've been trying to think of features of Python, and scripting languages in general, that can't be found in older languages, and have been having a surprising amount of trouble. Dynamic typing can be found in Smalltalk, the module concept can be found in Ada, functional parameters and the dynamic creation of functions can be found in Lisp. The indentation-based syntax seems to be unique, but that's not really what I'm looking for. So I'm wondering, what is innovative about Python, either in its design or implementation? Or is its magic really just in combining many useful features of prior languages in an unusually pleasant way?
Greg -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
