John Salerno wrote: > But isn't Python sort of known for the opposite, i.e. 'one simple way', > or something to that effect?
If we compare it with the "opposite" language--Perl, and think of these languages as natural languages, rather than programming languages, Perl's inventor Larry Wall, felt that having a lot of synonymns and allowing a lot of flexibility in word order etc, would make it easier to express one's ideas well. Python's inventor Guido van Rossum took a different approach. With fewer synonyms and a less redundant grammer, it will be easier to master the language, and certainly easier to read texts written by others. I don't know, but I suspect that the difference in approach is rooted in Guido's understanding that we typically spend much more time reading source code than we spend writing source code. As it turns out, having fewer synonyms and grammatic variants, does not make it harder to come up with different solutions to problems. It rather seems that the lack of complexity that a simpler grammer leads to makes it much easier to try out different solutions. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list