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Resource for Language Criticism

Name: Anonymous 2011-07-21 12:18

Is there a site like http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html but for all other crappy languages? You know, they all have their weak points and can be ridiculed.

Name: Anonymous 2011-07-21 12:52

Python is not as good as it is made out to be, in other words it suffers from a degree of hype. I'll try to argue this point. Potential detractors of the language usually lack the experience to criticize it authoratively. This is more true for Python as it is not (yet) common that people are coerced (by work, school) into learning and working with the language. So the detractors are few and drowned out by the vocal supporters.

The proponents of Python cite 'indentation' as the worst problem, this is a strawman argument 'this is the worst problem and its not really a problem'. This argument has been voted up presumably by people who like the language, because it is certainly not a good reason not to use Python.

Python is open source, and community driven from the beginning, attributes which give it support amongst people such as vocal blogger-developers (not necessarily the people who get the most done) who are credible proponents. Compare to java or C# whose main proponents have a commercial interest and as such have such devalued words that they can't credibly make any positive assertions about their products, and being commercial there are any number of detractors.

People often say Google use it a lot, the 'language of google', so it must be good. Now I suspect Google use it mainly for scripting and web programming.

I am far from an expert at Python, but I have done a couple of semi-serious projects in the language and will try to recall specifically what I didn't like.
- installation mentality, python has inherited the idea that libraries should be installed, so it infact is designed to work inside unix package management, which basically contains a fair amount of baggage (library version issues) and reduced portability. Of course it must be possible to package libraries with your application, but its not conventional.
- quite quirky e.g. __init__
- doesn't perform all that well
- no switch (why not??)
- poor utf support
- no outstanding feature (that I know of). closures and duck typing (all objects are hashes) are just dynamic language bread and butter.

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