Name: Anonymous 2008-12-05 18:08
So I was thinking about picking up some toy-language some day. I'm used to the real stuff (think C and friends), and the non-practical stuff (like LISP/SICP, although I'm certainly no expert on that - hard to become one, since you can't do anything useful), but I can see how these scripting-language-in-asteroids things can be attractive.
So, since Python 3 was released recently, I took a look.
What the fuck, man? This isn't "revolutionary" at all, it's a 10-times-slower C with a arguably prettier syntax.
It's missing CRITICAL features like coroutines (when you have a fork called "stackless Python", you know you're in trouble). Threading is pure shit - the GLOBAL INTERPRETER LOCK literally ruins any of the language's future prospects.
They first think I take a look at, basic types, starts showing serious trouble. And I quote:
That's great. An interpreted non-deterministic language. And even though it doesn't offer anything resembling a guarantee about the results of a FP computation, it goes ahead and picks up the slow type, just in case it ran too fast otherwise.
Immediately below I see:
Oh, I see. This must be a great example of that "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it ".
The sad thing is that I'm starting to fear it's amongst the best toy-but-remotely-useful languages.
So, since Python 3 was released recently, I took a look.
What the fuck, man? This isn't "revolutionary" at all, it's a 10-times-slower C with a arguably prettier syntax.
It's missing CRITICAL features like coroutines (when you have a fork called "stackless Python", you know you're in trouble). Threading is pure shit - the GLOBAL INTERPRETER LOCK literally ruins any of the language's future prospects.
They first think I take a look at, basic types, starts showing serious trouble. And I quote:
Floating point numbers are implemented using double
in C—all bets on their precision are off unless you
happen to know the machine you are working with.That's great. An interpreted non-deterministic language. And even though it doesn't offer anything resembling a guarantee about the results of a FP computation, it goes ahead and picks up the slow type, just in case it ran too fast otherwise.
Immediately below I see:
pow(x, y) x to the power y
x ** y x to the power yOh, I see. This must be a great example of that "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it ".
The sad thing is that I'm starting to fear it's amongst the best toy-but-remotely-useful languages.