Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
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Mark Lu #1 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
Sports fans, I'm told that a review of the book "Programming Python" is scheduled to appear in the November issue of the magazine "Dr. Dobb's Journal." The text of the article is already online, at: http://www.*-*-*.com/ It's an interesting review. He likes both the book and Python, but is a little less optimistic about Python's future prospects than some of us. Draw your own conclusions, but it seems a bit too early to call the race. For instance, the camel book was first published in 1991, 5 years before the first python books; we have awhile to catch up. Not necessarily picking on Perl, Mark L. --- "We're on a mission from God" --The Blues Brothers
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Tue, 21 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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Andrew Kuchlin #2 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
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>I'm told that a review of the book "Programming Python" is scheduled >to appear in the November issue of the magazine "Dr. Dobb's Journal."
Neat review. BTW, looking at DDJ's editorial calendar, February 1998 is "Scripting and Alternative Languages"; is anyone planning to write an article for it? According to DDJ's author guidelines at http://www.ddj.com/ddj/authors.htm, the lead time for an issue is 4 months, so the deadline is either just past, or is just a month away. I doubt that's enough time to get something ready, since it says they require a month just to look at a proposal. Other possibly-relevant DDJ issues in '98: May 1998 - Numerics and the Year 2000 Problem June 1998 - Patterns and Object-Oriented Design September 1998 - Communications and Networking November 1998 - Distributed Computing Another topic for IPC6... Andrew Kuchling
http://starship.skyport.net/crew/amk/
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Tue, 21 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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James Logaj #3 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
[DDJ review of Python and "Programming Python"...] : [...] likes both the book and Python, but is a : little less optimistic about Python's future prospects than some of us. The argument the reviewer presents is overly brief. I will take the liberty of expanding it to show its weakness: "All the programmers who will ever need to use a scripting language have already been born and have already learned Perl, Tcl, and VB. The gain in productivity in choosing Python is not large enough to offset the cost in learning it." Absent increases in life-extension, the need for any scripting language should cease to exist in ~130 years, since the cadre of scripting language programmers will have all died off. If you subscribe to the notion that maybe, just maybe, there exists a continual flow of new {*filter*} into (and new/old {*filter*} out of) the programming profession and that software tools are evaluated afresh by new programmers (and sometimes by unsatisfied old programmers) on a semi-continuous basis, then in the long march of time the tools that are better have a good probability of gaining ascendency. P.S. VB is a scripting language??
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Tue, 21 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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Joel Neel #4 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
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> The argument the reviewer presents is overly brief. I will take the > liberty of expanding it to show its weakness: > "All the programmers who will ever need to use a scripting language have > already been born and have already learned Perl, Tcl, and VB. The > gain in productivity in choosing Python is not large enough to offset the > cost in learning it."
Which also contains the fallacy that one who has learned a specific skill can count on ALWAYS being in an environment where that skill is relevant/useful. Case in point below. Quote: > P.S. VB is a scripting language??
Yep. In its incarnation as "VBA" (" Visual Basic for Applications"), it is the built-in scripting language for such products as msExcel and msWord. In its incarnation as " VBScript" it is a scripting language for Internet Exploiter. It can also be used to drive any w32 app which exposes its internal "objects" to message passing from other programs. Which raises the point that "all the programmers who will ever neet to use" a CROSS-PLATFORM "scripting language" will NOT have learned any incarnation of vb for that purpose. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- public class JoelNeely extends FedEx { // (
String workPhone = "901-375-6586"; // ( boolean speaksForCompany = false; } // C[_]
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Tue, 21 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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James Logaj #5 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
: > P.S. VB is a scripting language?? : Yep. In its incarnation as "VBA" ("Visual Basic for Applications"), it : is the built-in scripting language for such products as msExcel and : msWord. In its incarnation as "vbScript" it is a scripting language : for Internet Exploiter. It can also be used to drive any w32 app : which exposes its internal "objects" to message passing from other : programs. Thanks for the clarification. I haven't programmed on an MS Windows 3.x platform since writing an ODBC driver for an Ingres database a few years back; it was an eye-opening experience working with a broken-as-designed OS. I understand that W95 isn't nearly as broken-as-designed, but old phobias die hard. Anyway, I just don't pay much attention to MS Windows development tools as a result.
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Tue, 21 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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Paul Presco #6 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
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> Thanks for the clarification. I haven't programmed on an MS Windows 3.x > platform since writing an ODBC driver for an Ingres database a few years > back; it was an eye-opening experience working with a broken-as-designed OS. > I understand that W95 isn't nearly as broken-as-designed, but old phobias > die hard. Anyway, I just don't pay much attention to MS Windows development > tools as a result.
Windows 95 is still broken in may ways, but its support for scripting languages is impressive. It is surprisingly easy to talk to programs written in other languages (usually C++) through COM. On Unix I spend most of my time working with string streams and regular expressions. On Windows I can just ask for full-featured objects from applications in either the same address space or another, without me writing any C code at all. Most of Microsoft's OS-level tools and applications have callable interfaces and so do many other applications. Unix has ILU which is similar, but application support is very spotty. Paul Prescod
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Tue, 21 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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Aaron Watter #7 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
Quote: > "All the programmers who will ever need to use a scripting language have > already been born and have already learned Perl, Tcl, and VB. The > gain in productivity in choosing Python is not large enough to offset the > cost in learning it."
Precisely. Nonsense. I think there is a large market out there for Python among people who don't even consider themselves to be programmers (witness the popularity of Numeric among chemists, physicists, etc...) and there are even more of those. Python is very close to ideal, IMHO, as an easy power tool for automating computing tasks, and you don't even have to carry around a huge reference manual everywhere you go... People who aren't "professional programmers" will like that... Sadly, *some* professional programmers seem to like quirkiness and obfuscation because it's an easy way that they can seem to be wizards without actually knowing anything that taxes the brain. Sorry, but this is my analysis. -- Aaron Watters === http://starship.skyport.net/crew/aaron_watters/bplustree/term.cgi?417831
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Fri, 24 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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Jeffrey P Shel #8 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
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> P.S. VB is a scripting language??
I'm still uncertain VB counts as a language at all :) -- "Green Tony squeeled and I'm off to Galaxy X"
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Fri, 24 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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Kevin J. Butl #9 / 9
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 Python in Dr. Dobb's Journal (Nov)
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> [DDJ review of Python and "Programming Python"...] > : [...] likes both the book and Python, but is a > : little less optimistic about Python's future prospects than some of us. > The argument the reviewer presents is overly brief. I will take the > liberty of expanding it to show its weakness: > "All the programmers who will ever need to use a scripting language have > already been born and have already learned Perl, Tcl, and VB. The > gain in productivity in choosing Python is not large enough to offset the > cost in learning it."
I don't think that was the reviewer's argument. I think a better statement would be: "The gain in productivity in choosing Python is not large enough to offset the cost in learning it, given the large head start of the other scripting languages." The argument is more that a large base tends to continue to grow, because new people learn what is used where they work/study... Now, I think Python has several advantages, like NumPy, clean design, and COM integration. The question is will those advantages be enough to bring it intomainstream use as much as, say, Perl. I think the answer is yes--look at the past 18 months and extrapolate... kb --
A pun a day keeps the doctor away...and everyone else, too. http://students.cs.byu.edu/~butler/homepage.html (updated 10/18/96)
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Tue, 28 Mar 2000 03:00:00 GMT |
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