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Programming Technology

The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham 726

GnuVince writes "Paul Graham has posted a new article to his website that he called "The Python Paradox" which refines the statements he made in "Great Hackers" about Python programmers being better hackers than Java programmers. He basically says that since Python is not the kind of language that lands you a job like Java, those who learn it seek more than simply financial benefits, they seek better tools. Very interesting read."
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The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham

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  • by joeldg ( 518249 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:44PM (#9951689) Homepage
    "aiiii get them off my back!#@$#!"
    was what PG was thinking when he wrote that article.

    say "one" little thing about java and the "java duuudes" just go nuts..

    he probably hates the language but obviously wrote that to stop the steady stream of hate mail from the rabid duuude-troops...

    feel bad for him ;)
  • Yea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:44PM (#9951690)
    Right on. I wish employers/customers would take a look at the verity of your programming skills and not the number of years programming in one language. So what if you have 10 years of programming VB. Even if you have to program a VB app if you see a person with 3 years experience in VB and 7 Years in a buch of other languages it shows that this guy know how to program and is flexible to work around problems. Unlike possibly the 10 year VB guy who knows all the prebuilt widgets but something outside those widgets becomes impossible for him. I can't even count the number of times I helped people program on languages that I never used before (and they were soposed to be the experts) (I even helped out the Microsoft Guy in the 2003 Linux world expo in .Net) It is because I know a lot of languages and I can use concepts from the different ones and relate it to different languages. I also hate it when a customer tells you that they need an application written in this language to do this. My view is use the correct language for the job and I hate being forced to use a language that is not well optimized for the job. It is like someone telling someone when they build a house that they have to use this screwdriver and only this screwdriver to build a house. Someone who is truly a professional knows the different tools available and will use them when needed.
  • Re:Yea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:49PM (#9951746) Homepage Journal
    Along those same lines, there are usually many different ways to get the same job done. That's part of what I like about programming - finding the best (cheapest? most challenging? quickest? most efficient?) way to get something done. There's a challenge in it. A lot of employers don't look at it like that; they think programmers could be replaced by robots (or monkeys).
  • Re:Yea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:49PM (#9951747) Journal
    Good programmers are good programmers period, and the best programmers dont crusade for their "favorite language". If routine/application X is best accomplished in ASM, C, Java, Snobol, Python, or brainfuck, then so be it.
  • Apples and oranges (Score:1, Insightful)

    by mysterious_mark ( 577643 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:50PM (#9951758)
    Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language. The choice between the two would seem to be driven by what it is your trying to do. Seems strange that Java is touted as a scripting language when this was never really intended to this. M
  • Re:nonsense... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tlosk ( 761023 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:50PM (#9951763)
    But to motivate you to do what? Look at what people do for money. Look at the things people do never receiving a dime for it.

    There are some serious qualitative differences between those two global groups of actions. It seems more often the case that great art comes from subsistence funding, just enough to allow the creator to live while he/she creates. Additional funds don't have any where near the impact they do in so many other endeavors. In fact, if you look through large grant artwork, one might even conclude there is a negative impact.
  • Re:nonsense... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:50PM (#9951764)
    Well this is kinda the point of the article.
    A person who is apathetic to programming will learn whatever pays the most. While a person who loves to program will study and learn different tools and explore them to advance themselfs.

    It is like a person who brushes his teath to avoid the pain of cavities. VS. a person who brushes their teeth because the like the clean taist in their mouth. Who will have better oral health, the later because brushing teeth is a joy for him while the first guy will just do it enough.
  • by spookymonster ( 238226 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:53PM (#9951795)
    We're both obscure AND poorly-paid!
  • by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:56PM (#9951846) Journal
    Well if pretty source code is what matters, why dont you just use VB?

    For each Object in Collection
    Object.DoSomething
    Next Object

    That's more "readable" than either of your examples, even readable by someone who's never coded anything in their lives.

    Frankly, I wouldn't call it a better tool than either, though that might depend on the requirements of the project.

    You have to assume your code is going to be read by someone with an understanding of the language. If you don't know that a C program starts at int main(int argc, char **argv) then it's not the coders fault, for example.
  • by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom.thomasleecopeland@com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:57PM (#9951857) Homepage
    > Don't really see how you can compare
    > a scripting language with an OO
    > development language.

    Hm. I think the line between the two is getting pretty blurry. I mean... Ruby and Python are both "scripting languages", but folks have done some pretty impressive object-oriented apps with both of them. Also, the larger a Java app gets, the more it seems that it uses Class.forName and dynamic this-and-thats to work around static typing and such.

    I think that "scripting" vs "OO development" language may still be a useful distinction, but it might be more clear when comparing, say, AWK to Java, not Ruby [ruby-lang.org] to Java.
  • Not true! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by notany ( 528696 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:58PM (#9951859) Journal
    n 1960, a researcher interviewed 1500 business-school students and
    classified them in two categories: those who were in it for the
    money - 1245 of them - and those who were going to use the degree to do
    something they cared deeply about - the other 255 people. Twenty years
    later, the researcher checked on the graduates and found that 101 of
    them were millionaires?and all but one of those millionaires came from
    the 255 people who had pursued what they loved to do!

    Research on more than 400,000 Americans over the past 40 years
    indicates that pursuing your passions - even in small doses, here and
    there each day - helps you make the most of your current capabilities
    and encourages you to develop new ones.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:00PM (#9951897)
    I use Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme...

    Out of those, Python is probably the least Lisp-like, and the worst designed (well, okay, yes, Perl's design is *much* worst, but it can be massaged into doing lots of cool stuff).

    Yet PG brings it up all the time when he talks about Lisp. To me Lisp and Python are like night and day. How do you create anonymous functions and pass them as variables in Python? You can't, only "lambda *expressions*" which is a strange and arbitrary distinction. In Lisp, creating functions on the fly is the norm. Python doesn't have macros, or even blocks like smalltalk or Ruby, which again is one of the best things about Lisp, allowing you abstract and refactor the flow of code itself. In Python, you have arbitrary but fixed structures bolted on, like comprehensions, or tuples. In Lisp, you can create new constructs on the fly, using the same syntax as everything else.

    In my opinion Python is like the Java of the open source world: tons of people use it, they think it's great because it's a lot better than whatever they used last year (C++, Perl, etc), and they don't realize (or care) there are better languages that can help them work faster.

    Maybe Paul should adjust his spiel to simply say: the more obscure a language a person has mastered, the more likely he is a smart self-motivated programmer.

    But even that isn't true all the time...
  • by adawgnow ( 793565 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:01PM (#9951900)
    This article had no basis for its argument other than the opinion that Python programmers are smarter because they seek the language out (and the language rocks!). This whole argument belittles the fact that there are some amazingly talented Java programmers out there. There are great things going on in the world of Jakarta.apache.org and things like Hibernate and Spring rock! Hey aspect oriented programming was formalized by Java people. Java is heavy handed, and for projects that don't require a week or more of design and analysis prep, Java is usually a dumb idea. It is weak in the thick client area, as well. But hey, Java is cool with me. Let the language meet the need, and if you think something is cumbersome, I bet youre using it for the wrong purpose.
  • Re:Python vs Java (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Svennig ( 665498 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:01PM (#9951909)
    To me, thats a very strange statement. The standard library of Java is, IMHO, one of the strongest around.

    If you combine the java Collections with the Jakarta Collections library then you have an almost unbeatable combination (beaten perhaps only by Lisp and its treatement of collections, lists etc).

    I admit that there are a myriad of redundant and (mostly) confusing and unnecessary standards. But you shouldn't complain that so many XML parsing toolkits exist, that gives you the freedom to choose the one thats right for a given application.

    And after all, isnt that what this is all about? Categorising one programmer as better than another because of their programming language is like saying that surgeons are better than barbarians. Both use blades, but you dont want to perform heart operations with a longsword!

  • by brunson ( 91995 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:01PM (#9951914) Homepage
    "Because it is not as strong a language or development platform as Java"

    Oh, bullshit.
  • by dot niet ( 629871 ) <MplsCpl@yahoo.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:05PM (#9951956)
    about why Python hasn't gained acceptance in commercial software development circles. I find these last two articles nothing more than glorified flame bait. If some of the development community's best and brightest think this language is superior, why not drive an effort to help it put food on the table rather than relegate it to a tool that helps you write scripts to rotate witty quotes in your .plan file?

    Pardon me while I go build a better mouse trap, pontificate on how much better it is and what a great mouse catcher I am, and then put it in my hamster's cage to prove it.

  • Paradox? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Svennig ( 665498 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:07PM (#9951983)
    "Hence what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be able to hire better programmers, because they'll attract only those who cared enough to learn it."

    And there in lies the greatest paradox. If companies employed people who knew python, everyone would learn it!!

    What he's really advocating is use of unknown programming languages. Thats fine, but maitainability might become an issue simply because it is hard to find the people that code in it.

    No-ones been hurt by sticking with the mainstream.

  • This argument just doesn't seem constructive to me.
    When I'm looking to hire a programmer, I'm looking for one thing. Adaptability.

    In my job, I've used C++, Objective-C, COM, C#, Lisp and Python. The theme here is utility. I try to use the best, most natural language for the task at hand. I don't need to work beside evangalists, I want people who see programming languages as what they are ... components in a toolbox. You choose the one appropriate for the job.

  • by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:11PM (#9952034) Homepage Journal
    Well, all I can say to Paul is "you're wrong".

    I agree. Paul is trying to justify an untenable position. My favorite quote:

    I didn't mean by this that Java programmers are dumb. I meant that Python programmers are smart. It's a lot of work to learn a new programming language.

    Yeah, well it was quite a lot of work for those Java developers to learn Java as well. People aren't born knowing Java anymore than they're born knowing Python. It takes a lot of work to learn how to program in Java correctly -- even more effort than would be required to learn Python I'd venture (based on my extensive experience...).

    A good Java programmer has to be smart. If they're writing anything non-trivial, they need to be aware of classloaders, how the garbage collection system works, multithreaded software design, optimization, etc.

    I can agree that I've encountered a whole lot of Java developers out there who write bad code. But I don't think the ratio is any different than in any other popular language.

    Yaz.

  • Re:Paradox? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:13PM (#9952046) Journal
    If a company hired good programmers, then they'd realize that the difference between languages is mostly syntactical, and a fairly shallow learning curve. That is, to a good (experienced) programmer.

    I've never learned python, but I can read through some of the tutorials and nothing about it scares me or seems radically new. Just some new syntax and keywords, ho-hum. Such a silly thing to argue about.

    Though computer geeks argue about much sillier things. Ie; the flamewars on "hardcore techie" websites about whether Panaflo or Vantec makes the quieter 80mm case fan are fun to read when you're bored.
  • Total nitpick (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:14PM (#9952053) Homepage
    I'm nitpicking, but it's not a paradox. A paradox is something that must be untrue in order to be true, or something which can neither be true nor untrue at the same time, or must be true and untrue at the same time....

    Anyway, something like that. Here is the closest he comes to a paradox:

    ...the language to learn, if you want to get a good job, is a language that people don't learn merely to get a job.

    First, employers are always looking for people who go above and beyond the bare-minimum, including people who like what they're doing enough to do it even when they aren't paid. That doesn't constitute a paradox. Second, as soon as people widely believe that it is a good standard for hiring programmers (meaning it really is the language to learn to get a job), people will start learning it merely to get a job, so I'm not sure his statement really even makes sense.

    So, while I'm not saying anything about his statement that python programmers are better (since I'm not a very good programmer in any sense, and wouldn't know to argue), describing it as a "paradox" seems like pseudo-intellectual camouflage for a "Python RULES!" article.

  • by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:14PM (#9952066)
    That's more "readable" than either of your examples, even readable by someone who's never coded anything in their lives.

    I'm familiar well over a dozen languages, but I've never used VB. It's not clear at all to me what the "Next Object" line us supposed to do; it's a rather unusual looking construct. I assume it advances the iterator, but in most languages that's handled by the "for each" loop itself.

    It really is pretty hard to beat Python's version for clarity and simplicty:

    for x in collection: x.foo()
  • by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:21PM (#9952151) Journal
    Don't rely on Java books when you're judging it. Most (almost all) Java books are completely worthless. Before you think I'm a nut, let me explain.

    There's a mindset in corporate/professional comp sci I like to call "fat book syndrome". It works like this: a developer, usually a consultant, wants to be successful. So he spends time in Borders on a regular basis, buying new books with which he can expand his skills. Does he look at the thin, little books? No. He looks at the fat, weighty books. He reasons, "if I read that whole, big, fat book, I'll know everything and I'll be an alpha geek". Hence the increasing weight/volume of textbooks these days -- authors want their book to be the big, fat book the ambitious developer selects.

    Now, you've got two related effects here.

    First, the developer is adopting protective camoflage in the office, by building up a huge stockpile of big, fat books to match his fellow developer's stockpile of big, fat books. This is very similar to the United States and Russia building up their nuke stockpiles. Periodically, there's a crisis: "OH MY GOD" our hero will cry, "Dave just bought Design Patterns!" and he'll go to Borders after work and buy the latest boat anchor from the Gang of Four.

    The matching effect on the Author's side is, authors want to sell books. Developers are buying fatter and fatter books, so the authors want their latest books to be even fatter than the last set. So, the books are growing, and it's mostly protective camoflage just like the fat book collection on the developer's bookcase. There's a sort of symbiosis going on, if you think about it. Everyone's yelling "FATTER! FATTER!" so that soon, you'll need luggage to bring your newest books to work.

    Having said all that, what makes all this extra funny is, to learn any language, all you really need is a little review book (to master the syntax) and AN INTERNET CONNECTION. Wanna learn Java? Go to Barnes and Noble (those bookstores again) and get a lovely little book called "Java: Practical Guide for Programmers" by Zbigniew Sikora (it's 171 pages long, you can finish it in a couple of nights). Then, go online and read the Java tutorial, and any FAQs you can find on the various tools. Then start doing a project and consult the API reference.

    There's no need for all those big, dumb books. Most of them are crammed with nonsense filler, and the samples are only as good as the author is skilled as a programmer.

    Anyway, sorry to ramble for so long, but don't sell Java short just because all the books suck. The language itself is pretty nice. Get a SMALL book to get up to speed, dig around on the internet, and you'll find things a lot more friendly.

  • by GreenCrackBaby ( 203293 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:26PM (#9952226) Homepage
    A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about a new startup he was involved with. It sounded promising. But the next time I talked to him, he said they'd decided to build their software on Windows NT, and had just hired a very experienced NT developer to be their chief technical officer. When I heard this, I thought, these guys are doomed. One, the CTO couldn't be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have had to use NT voluntarily, multiple times, and I couldn't imagine a great hacker doing that; and two, even if he was good, he'd have a hard time hiring anyone good to work for him if the project had to be built on NT.


    Not trolling here, but this opinion piece is stupid. Hell, just look at that quote above. "He couldn't be a first rate hacker since he obviously chose NT voluntarily." According to the author, there's no way to succeed if you choose to build on NT.


    Knowing Python doesn't make you a "first rate hacker". Any decent programmer can pick up a language like python in a day or two. A good hacker (i.e. a programmer that a company would want to hire) is someone who can take their previous experience and apply that to the problem at hand, using the tools available. Saying "...but I know Python" is the same as saying "...but I know Assembly" when you have a bunch of C++ code to write.

  • by pthisis ( 27352 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:30PM (#9952282) Homepage Journal
    Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language

    Which is which? Python is at least as OO as java. Even ints are objects.

    >>> a=2
    >>> a+1
    3
    >>> a.__add__(1) # used by + operator
    3
    >>> class my_int(int): ... def __add__(self, b): ... if self==2: ... return self ... return int.__add__(self, b) ...
    >>> a=my_int(2)
    >>> a+1
    2
    >>> a+2
    2
    >>> a=my_int(1)
    >>> a+1
    2
    >>> a+2
    3
  • by dekeji ( 784080 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:33PM (#9952331)
    Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language.

    Python clearly is an object-oriented development language; it even has multiple inheritance. Python is pretty close in its semantics to Smalltalk, and there are several native compilers and environments for Python. So, Python really is much more than a "scripting language".

    It's not clear that Java should even be called "object oriented". Alan Kay said "I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." Well, Java's object system is even more restrictive than C++'s.

    So, yes, it does make sense to talk about Java and Python and compare them.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:33PM (#9952338)
    But it'll be about four years you'll be able to actually use them because it'll take that long for folks to move off of JDK 1.4 :-)

    Well, by that standard, I guess you can't use *any* of Ruby. Most people, on Windows and Mac anyway, have a JVM. Who has a ruby interpreter? It doesn't even get installed automatically in any real Linux distry (ie, not counting "Rubyix" or other junk no one uses), like Perl and sometimes Python do.

    So, if you shouldn't use 5.0 features in Java because no one has it installed, yopu shouldn't bother with Ruby at all.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:37PM (#9952379)
    " ahhh, Slashdot, the place where "Oh, bullshit" is an insightful comment."

    Oh, bullshit.
  • by ip ( 115666 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:37PM (#9952383)
    The value added to an organization from a good hacker, doesn't come from the number of lines of code per day, of number of functions implemented per day, but from the design and programming leaps he or she can add .

    If you know Python, it's either because you had time to learn it out of curiousity, or because you needed to learn it for work or school. In either case, your value in terms of innovation has not changed. Maybe your ability to deliver those innovations quickly has, but that still doesn't make or break your value to a business. Is the fact that you learned it for fun a difference? Sure it is, but the same applies to people who learned Java for fun.

    If your like me, and you do know Python, and it makes you smile every time you write something, and your employer accepts it because things are getting done, then great. But a number of people feel the same way about Java.

    Is the average Pythoneer better than the average Java hacker? It's a meaningless question.
  • Re:Paradox? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dekeji ( 784080 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:37PM (#9952387)
    Thats fine, but maitainability might become an issue simply because it is hard to find the people that code in it.

    Maintainability becomes a problem when you hire the first guy off the street who only knows the fad-du-jour, Java or VB, for example. Using off-beat languages gives you a great deal of inherent quality control: people who interview for Python, Lisp, or ML jobs generally are of higher quality.

    No-ones been hurt by sticking with the mainstream.

    You can't have been on this planet very long: large groups of people behave in stupid and dangerous ways, whether it comes to politics or choice of programming languages.
  • by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:40PM (#9952427) Journal
    I know religious wars are traditional here on Slashdot, but saying that Python is better than Java, or that Java is better than Python, well, it's like saying Audis are better than BMW's. It's a matter of personal taste, and no more than that.

    Name me ONE TASK that Python (or Java) can do that the other can't. There isn't one. Tell me which one is faster! On modern equipment, you won't notice any difference for most tasks. You'd have to find something massively computationally intensive to get any sort of reasonable comparison, and even then it would be tough.

    In the end, it comes down to this: what is your personal coding style? What sort of syntax are you most comfortable with? If you come from a scripting background, you'll probably like Python better. If you're coming from a C background and love those curly brackets and semicolons, you'll dig Java (that's my personal preference, by the way, I'm uncomfortable with using indentation to manage blocks, for example). Maybe something in one library or the other is attractive to you. Maybe you just want to use Open Source.

    It's all just a matter of taste.

    Having said that, the original article was dead wrong about one other thing. The idea that Python attracts "smarter coders" because they're doing it for the love of it is misguided. The reason is, there are smart coders writing for the love of both languages; Java only gets more idiots because there's money in it. So the author SHOULD have said "If you use Python, you'll get far fewer applicants, so it'll be easier to filter out the hacks".
  • Re:nonsense... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by js3 ( 319268 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:44PM (#9952464)
    A person who is apathetic to programming will learn whatever pays the most. While a person who loves to program will study and learn different tools and explore them to advance themselfs

    that statement is bullshit in the purest sense. Could it be that nobody is learning python because they can already do whatever needs to be done in other languages? Programmers are king when it comes to inefficiency. Go to sourceforge and you will find 10-20 programs doing basically the same thing. Every year someone creates a new language, that does that same thing as the 50 other languages that already exist, and when they are asked why nobody uses it they give you that quote above. bullspit indeed.
  • by Khazunga ( 176423 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:48PM (#9952504)
    Much like operator overloading in C++, this allows you to write in the language of the problem, rather than the language of the language.
    Unknowingly, you just summarized beautifuly why I absolutely hate operator overloading. It makes the entering curve on a running project (or new maintenance project) absurdly steep. All of a sudden, you not only have to learn the architecture of the solution, but the goddamn language of the solution.

    It's a really nice idea, with great direct effects and horrible side-effects.

  • by abigor ( 540274 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:48PM (#9952507)
    Also, Python has an interactive prompt. This sounds like no big deal, but it is amazingly helpful when writing code to run little bits or even entire methods just to make sure things are correct. This makes the language even more Lisp-like.
  • by geophile ( 16995 ) <jao@geoBLUEphile.com minus berry> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:48PM (#9952515) Homepage
    OK, so let me see if I understand. Better programmers select Python over Java because Python is the better language. Java is "a language that makes source code ugly". But "real ugliness" is "having to build programs out of the wrong concepts".

    Are we talking about the concepts of the language, or the concepts of the application that the language is being used to express?

    He probably doesn't mean the concepts of the language, because Java and Python have much in common. (And no, trivial syntactic differences don't count as conceptual differences.)

    If he means the concepts of the application, then there goes his whole argument about Java forcing developers to build programs out of the wrong concepts.

    Such nonsense. There are great, mediocre and horrible programmers in any language. The best programmers can create great software in any language.

  • by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @04:52PM (#9952555) Homepage
    Quite simply, those who do things becasue they love them tend to do them better than those who do them because they have to. So yes, this would seem to imply that those who use Python (a language that's just now gaining ground) tend to be more skilled than those who use Java (a language that can make you money). ...not a rule, per say, but I can see the potential for truth in it.
  • by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum@gmai l . com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:04PM (#9952682) Homepage Journal
    It's a really nice idea, with great direct effects and horrible side-effects.

    You seem to have missed the point of the article intro-text entirely.

    If you come at Python like you're studying it, for fun, and not "entering curve on a running project" (whatever that means), then you don't actually trip up on the language/problem domain issue. Instead, you have fun with it, and it makes programming fun again ...
  • by amightywind ( 691887 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:06PM (#9952710) Journal

    Python is for troglodytes who can't wrap their minds around Lisp.

  • Re:Not true! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by orasio ( 188021 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:06PM (#9952715) Homepage
    That could also mean that lying about your motivations helps becoming a millionaire.
  • by arhar ( 773548 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:26PM (#9952942)
    From http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html [paulgraham.com] :

    I've never written a Java program, never more than glanced over reference books about it ...

    Do I need to add more?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:27PM (#9952945)
    Paul has an interest in Python because he has this sneaking suspicion that Python will evolve into Lisp, albeit with a cruftier syntax. He admitted as much when I saw him talk at Powell's during OSCON.

    Unfortunately, I think Guido is taking the (wrong) steps to make sure that Python never becomes Lisp...
  • by chromatic ( 9471 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @05:44PM (#9953108) Homepage

    I can understand your quibble with learning what certain symbols mean in a specific context, but what part of learning a new codebase isn't learning the language of the solution? Class names, method names, function names, variable names, and metaphors -- they're all part of that new language.

  • by pthisis ( 27352 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:12PM (#9953385) Homepage Journal
    Name me ONE TASK that Python (or Java) can do that the other can't.
    Both are turing complete, and you could implement a Python interpreter in Java or vice-versa. If "it's possible somehow" is your measure, then there's no reason to choose Java over assembly.

    In the end, it comes down to this: what is your personal coding style? What sort of syntax are you most comfortable with?

    Syntax is largely irrelevant, people learn it quickly. Much more important are things like:

    * Do I have strong typing or not? (Python, Java, ML, Ada vs C, C++, Tcl)
    * Do I have dynamic typing or static (Python, Lisp, Tcl vs. Ada, C, Java, ML)
    * How good is the language I'm using at modelling the problem I'm trying to solve?
    * How good is the language at expressing things clearly and concisely
    * How easy is it to reuse code/read code written by others/maintain large systems

    Things like functional programming, pattern matching (NOT regex matching of strings, but real ML-style pattern matching), object orientation, metaprogramming, dynamic code generation, hygienic macros, the type model, etc all have REAL affects on how easily and elegantly you can solve a problem.

    Less sexy but equally useful are details like "are flexible mappings a language feature or a library add-on", which seems trivial but makes a huge difference in practice.

    Some of those features are very important when doing certain things and nearly useless when doing other things.

    But programming languages definitely CAN be "better" than each other with respect to certain problem domains, and Python and Java differ in one of the most fundamental ways there is (more fundamental than e.g language-level support for object oriented programming, in my opinion) in that Java is statically typed and Python is dynamically typed.
  • by KC0A ( 307773 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:22PM (#9953463) Homepage
    Good programmers with powerful languages can turn large projects into small projects. Average programmers tend to write about twice as much code as a good programmer would use for the same problem. Give that good programmer a good language, and you can reduce the line count in half again.
    Suddenly your half-million line program is only 125,000 lines, and can be done in half as much time by one-fourth as many people.

  • by mav[LAG] ( 31387 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:25PM (#9953476)
    Hell, just look at that quote above. "He couldn't be a first rate hacker since he obviously chose NT voluntarily." According to the author, there's no way to succeed if you choose to build on NT.

    That's not what he said. He said he couldn't be a first rate hacker. He's carefully defined what he thinks makes a first rate hacker leading up to this paragraph and then gives it as a counter-example.

    Knowing Python doesn't make you a "first rate hacker". Any decent programmer can pick up a language like python in a day or two.

    RTOFA. He says:
    And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know.
    Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire.


    You claim:
    A good hacker (i.e. a programmer that a company would want to hire) is someone who can take their previous experience and apply that to the problem at hand, using the tools available.

    Graham says a first rate hacker would not be satisfied with just any tools and would probably think that their previous experience isn't worth a whole lot - even though in the eyes of other hackers it might be godlike stuff. I agree that what he says is contraversial and pushes a lot of people's buttons but be fair in your criticism.
  • by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:28PM (#9953499) Homepage Journal
    subdate()

    Do you have one of those narrow screens talked about in a previous Slashdot story? I used to laugh at people who wrote out subtractDate() - until I had to revisit my own code after not seeing it for months and figure out that procntr() meant "process the entry".

    You have a lot of keys on your keyboard; might as well use 'em.

  • by aled ( 228417 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:43PM (#9953645)
    Seems offensive to me. What if the article would be the other way around, would you say the same?
    I don't know who the writer is but if his experience is that then he doesn't know that much programmers.
  • by Fnord ( 1756 ) <joe@sadusk.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:52PM (#9953712) Homepage
    See, this is what I love (and admittedly alot of people hate) about Perl. I remembered reading that use of the for keyword, back when I was reading the camel book, but
    foreach (@x){ do_something($_); }
    was simple enough so I promptly forgot about it. But
    do_something($_) for @x;
    is so obvious in its syntax that I immediately know what it's saying, at least if I understand other simpler statements like:
    print if something_bad();

    I just don't get the recent animosity towards perl. It's honestly one of the most powerful languages I've used. The unreadable code argument falls apart when you've seen some of the COMPLEATLY unreadable Java, Python, Lisp (although I personally think that language is unreadable by design) code I've seen. Any language can and will be abused. Strict languages like Java just punish the creative programmer for the failings of his incompetant coworkers.
  • by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @06:54PM (#9953734) Homepage Journal
    Most of the complaints about Graham are likely from people who are just barely programmers.

    I call bullshit on you.

    I'm complaining about Graham and other language-bigots, and over the last 20 years I've coded in:

    • Java
    • C
    • C++
    • REXX
    • ObjectREXX
    • Ada 83
    • Ada 95
    • Modula-2
    • Pascal
    • Basic
    • x86 Assmebly
    • VAX-VMS Assembly

    ...and have dabbled in many others (and I'm exccluding a whole slew of scripting languages from the above list). And I've written that code on and for the following platforms:

    • Mac OS X
    • Mac OS 7
    • VMS
    • OS/2
    • AIX
    • HP-UX
    • Solaris
    • Linux
    • *BSD
    • Dynix
    • Windows (3.0 to 2000)
    • DOS
    • CP/M
    • PalmOS
    • S/390
    • PlayStation 2

    ... and that list excludes older systems I started on like the Commodore 64 that didn't have an Operating System (per-se).

    And much of this development hasn't been on small projects either. Indeed, a good portion of my platform development experience came about when I worked at the IBM Toronto Softwre Development Lab, doing DB2 development.

    And I'm a Java developer. And not because I have to for job purposes (indeed, I generally refuse to work at jobs using Java, because most Java-related jobs suck), but because it's a language and environment with strengths not sufficiently matched elsewhere. I've programmed AI solutions in Java, protocol handlers in Java, and various other complex tasks beyond your usual "call a bunch of APIs" crap you seem to paint Java developers as doing.

    Ok, for pure brainpower here is the competition I propose: Take a Python programmer and a Java programmer. They tackle the same problem in both Python and Java. I'm betting on the Python guy to present better solutions in both languages.

    I'd take that bet, and then completely wipe the floor with whomever you pitted me against :).

    Sorry, but this sort of language bigotism really gets to me. Yes, there are crappy Java developers out there. Yes, many organizations doing Java development are targeting mundane tasks. But same goes for every other language out there -- the only difference is in degree.

    In my years of speaking at conferences and chairing workshops on topics in computer science research, I've met a whole pile of brilliant people working in Java to solve complex problems. I've seen it used for artificial intelligence, robotics, research operating systems, protocol stacks, and game development -- more compilcated projects than your typical Python developer is ever going to tackle (nevermind all of the VM research I've seen surrounding Java).

    Brad BARCLAY
    Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
    The jSyncManager Project [jsyncmanager.org] (Open Source Java at that).

  • Re:Yea - Ah man! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bstarrfield ( 761726 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @07:55PM (#9954155)

    Well, uh, generally I agree with that... but, earlier today there was a posting about why the number of female Comp Sci majors was dropping.

    Hope they don't read Slashdot...

  • Re:Yea (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @08:26PM (#9954414)
    I also hate it when a customer tells you that they need an application written in this language to do this. My view is use the correct language for the job and I hate being forced to use a language that is not well optimized for the job.

    As a journalist, I know how you feel. I hate it when a magazine says "and we want this article in English, please". I mean, I tell them, look, it's much easier to discuss this subject in Chinese, and it'll come in at half the length too - look at all that space you could save! Look, you'd free up two whole pages you could sell advertising on! You'd get a better article and make more profit too!

    But they say no, we want it in English, none of our staff speak Chinese. Man, is that unreasonable or what?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:24PM (#9954783)
    but not Python. And you know why? It sounds petty and stupid, but I just hate the whitespace indenting. I have always thought that perfect code readability relied on the felxibility to format certain sections of code differently than others, and the need to have indenting control grouping of statements has always been way too rigid for my tastes.

    That's OK. Most Python programmers would probably say that the main reason they use Python instead of Perl is because they find Perl's syntax ugly. I tried out Python for a little while and determined that Perl was easily more capable than Python, so I discarded Python. If you're being superficial, then so are the majority of Python programmers.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 13, 2004 @02:40AM (#9956267)
    If that is your concern, Python is exactly the opposite. Python is definitely the easiest language to enter a running project.

    Reasons:
    1.) Pythonic code. This notion means Pythonic programmers strive to write code in one certain way that has been perceived as efficient in expressiveness. So code written by experienced Python programmers looks pretty much the same and is very easy to understand.
    2.) White space as blocks. Many new comers hate this idea. But Python programmers think it is the best thing since sliced bread (once they learned to configure they editors not to confuse between tabs and spaces). This means Python code is always uniformly formatted.
    3.) The community really debates a lot on making the language as easy to learn as possible as opposed to tossing everything but the kitchen sink approach that languages like Perl seem to take. Right now there is intense debate in the Python newsgroup on how best to introduce decorators without breaking the pythonic tradition.

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