Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
* Some languages are just fundamentally bad. The flexible string representation is a perfect exemple. Again, a short explanation: This FSR splits unicode in chunks. Two immediate consequences: - It's necessary to keep track of each individual internal pieces of text. - It's necessary to waste time in switching between the internal coding schemes. Bad memory and bad performance at the same time. In fact, with such a mechanism, it is even impossible to write an editor. jmf I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. * Some languages force you to do a lot of bookkeeping, memory management, etc. These are inferior unless their corresponding advantages (usually performance or memory use) justify it. * Some situations specifically demand one language. If you're writing code to be deployed on cheap web servers, it's probably going to have to be in PHP. If it's to run inside a web browser, it pretty much has to be JavaScript, ActionScript, or maybe something that compiles to one of those. But that would still leave you with a good few choices. When it comes down to it, how do you choose between Ruby, Python, Perl, Pike, JavaScript, insert language of choice here, etcetera? I can think of a few considerations that may or may not be important... and I'm sure you can add more. - Library support. For web work, it might be useful to be able to create a PNG image on the fly (live graphs and such), or to have a simple one-liner that handles cookies and persistence. - Familiarity with the language. Why learn another one when you already know this one? - *Un*familiarity with the language. If you're going to have to learn, may as well charge your boss for it! - Proper Unicode support. For manipulating text, helps to be able to work with it as text. - Lack of proper Unicode support. Maybe it's easier to just work with bytes everywhere? :) - Ease/atomicity of deployment of new versions (maybe even while it's running) - Buzzwordiness? If your boss asks you to choose a language and you can say either Ruby on Rails or CherryPy, are you more likely to get approval for the former? Something to throw open there. Citations from actual choices made a bonus. :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 8:28 PM, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. The flexible string representation is a perfect exemple. Wow. A new low for you, jmf... comparing PEP 393 to Ook?!? In fact, with such a mechanism, it is even impossible to write an editor. And somehow a performance tradeoff makes Python no longer Turing complete. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On 11/11/2013 09:28, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. The flexible string representation is a perfect exemple. Again, a short explanation: This FSR splits unicode in chunks. Two immediate consequences: - It's necessary to keep track of each individual internal pieces of text. - It's necessary to waste time in switching between the internal coding schemes. Bad memory and bad performance at the same time. In fact, with such a mechanism, it is even impossible to write an editor. jmf For the benefit of newbies, lurkers or whatever please ignore the rubbish written by Joseph McCarthy Faust regarding PEP 393 and the Flexible String Representation. He keeps making these false claims in double spaced google crap despite having been shot down in this thread https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.python/JkVQT0Wbq1A[1-25-false], where he was asked to provide evidence to support his claims. he didn't do so then, he's been asked repeatedly since to do so but hasn't because he can't, hence his newly aquired nickname. -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On 11/11/2013 01:28 AM, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. The flexible string representation is a perfect exemple. Argh! He escaped! *chase* *scuffle* *stuff* *stuff* *stuff* Whew. Safely back in the troll bin. Okay, back to my day. -- ~Ethan~ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Sunday, November 10, 2013 4:56:38 PM UTC+8, Jorgen Grahn wrote: On Sun, 2013-11-10, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: On 09/11/2013 22:58, Chris Angelico wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. One of the worst coding experiences I ever had was trying to build an app for a Roku media player. They have a home-grown language called BrightScript. Barf. And this is exactly why I was so strongly against the notion of developing an in-house scripting language. It may be a lot of work to evaluate Lua, Python, JavaScript, and whatever others we wanted to try, but it's a *lot* less work than making a new language that actually is worth using. Yes. I am baffled that people insist on doing the latter. Designing a limited /data/ language is often a good idea; designing something which eventually will need to become Turing-complete is not. Python is designed with the VM interpreter to execute compiled byte codes. Of course, C/C++/JAVA are lower level languages not designed in this way. To remedy the efficient part, cython and C-extensions are available in Python. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Sun, 2013-11-10, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: On 09/11/2013 22:58, Chris Angelico wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. One of the worst coding experiences I ever had was trying to build an app for a Roku media player. They have a home-grown language called BrightScript. Barf. And this is exactly why I was so strongly against the notion of developing an in-house scripting language. It may be a lot of work to evaluate Lua, Python, JavaScript, and whatever others we wanted to try, but it's a *lot* less work than making a new language that actually is worth using. Yes. I am baffled that people insist on doing the latter. Designing a limited /data/ language is often a good idea; designing something which eventually will need to become Turing-complete is not. /Jorgen -- // Jorgen Grahn grahn@ Oo o. . . \X/ snipabacken.se O o . -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 8:21 AM, Mark Janssen dreamingforw...@gmail.com wrote: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on where the field of computer languages is heading, and how that affects the choice of languages for building web sites. Well, there aren't that many groupings towards which languages specialize for (not including embedded or other application-specific domains). There's OS scripting, Web scripting, and then the otherwise general-purpose normative languages in the middle of those two extremes. But this view presumes a model of computation which hasn't settled into wide agreement. So, on what basis _would_ you choose a language for some purpose? Without speaking specifically of web development here, how do you choose a language? * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. * Some languages force you to do a lot of bookkeeping, memory management, etc. These are inferior unless their corresponding advantages (usually performance or memory use) justify it. * Some situations specifically demand one language. If you're writing code to be deployed on cheap web servers, it's probably going to have to be in PHP. If it's to run inside a web browser, it pretty much has to be JavaScript, ActionScript, or maybe something that compiles to one of those. But that would still leave you with a good few choices. When it comes down to it, how do you choose between Ruby, Python, Perl, Pike, JavaScript, insert language of choice here, etcetera? I can think of a few considerations that may or may not be important... and I'm sure you can add more. - Library support. For web work, it might be useful to be able to create a PNG image on the fly (live graphs and such), or to have a simple one-liner that handles cookies and persistence. - Familiarity with the language. Why learn another one when you already know this one? - *Un*familiarity with the language. If you're going to have to learn, may as well charge your boss for it! - Proper Unicode support. For manipulating text, helps to be able to work with it as text. - Lack of proper Unicode support. Maybe it's easier to just work with bytes everywhere? :) - Ease/atomicity of deployment of new versions (maybe even while it's running) - Buzzwordiness? If your boss asks you to choose a language and you can say either Ruby on Rails or CherryPy, are you more likely to get approval for the former? Something to throw open there. Citations from actual choices made a bonus. :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On 09/11/2013 22:58, Chris Angelico wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. In my last job I was forced into using Apple(42 not so obvious ways to do it)Script. Yuck. -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On 09/11/2013 22:58, Chris Angelico wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. One of the worst coding experiences I ever had was trying to build an app for a Roku media player. They have a home-grown language called BrightScript. Barf. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: On 09/11/2013 22:58, Chris Angelico wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. One of the worst coding experiences I ever had was trying to build an app for a Roku media player. They have a home-grown language called BrightScript. Barf. And this is exactly why I was so strongly against the notion of developing an in-house scripting language. It may be a lot of work to evaluate Lua, Python, JavaScript, and whatever others we wanted to try, but it's a *lot* less work than making a new language that actually is worth using. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On 09/11/2013 23:24, Mark Lawrence wrote: On 09/11/2013 22:58, Chris Angelico wrote: * Some languages are just fundamentally bad. I do not recommend ever writing production code in Whitespace, Ook, or Piet. In my last job I was forced into using Apple(42 not so obvious ways to do it)Script. Yuck. I'd forgotten I'd used Monk back around 1999/2000. I couldn't remember much about it so just looked it up here http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18867_01/SRE/Monk_Reference_SRE.pdf, not sure if it's double or triple yuck. Still, when you've been spoiled by Python for 10 years I guess anything else looks bad by definition :) -- Python is the second best programming language in the world. But the best has yet to be invented. Christian Tismer Mark Lawrence -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Mark Lawrence breamore...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: I'd forgotten I'd used Monk back around 1999/2000. I couldn't remember much about it so just looked it up here http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18867_01/SRE/Monk_Reference_SRE.pdf, not sure if it's double or triple yuck. From the contents page in that PDF: Chapter 1 - Introduction 16 - Document Purpose and Scope 16 - Intended Audience 16 - Organization of Information 17 - Writing Conventions 18 - For information on how to use a specific add-on product (for example, an e*Way Intelligent Adapter), see the user’s guide for that product. 19 - SeeBeyond Web Site 20 Page 19. Lolwut? ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Languages for different purposes (was Re: New user's initial thoughts / criticisms of Python)
On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote: So, on what basis _would_ you choose a language for some purpose? Without speaking specifically of web development here, how do you choose a language? Most generally, you choose a language informed by the language designer's intentions of the language, usually stated explicitly. Of course, if you're in a constrained environment, then that is going to dictate your decision. After that, you're left with your own level of expertise regarding language design (which for many is not much) and the breadth of the field to examine (usually larger than most are familiar). This is an arena where PhD's are made. Obviously, languages just designed to [brain]f*ck with you, despite being theoretically complete, aren't much of a candidate for evaluation. But that would still leave you with a good few choices. When it comes down to it, how do you choose between Ruby, Python, Perl, Pike, JavaScript, insert language of choice here, etcetera? I can think of a few considerations that may or may not be important... and I'm sure you can add more. Among general purpose languages that pretty much offer the same benefits, the community often informs the decision. -- MarkJ Tacoma, Washington -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
