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Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

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  Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development? Carl Banks <pavlovevidence@gmail.com> - 2011-05-22 23:46 -0700
    Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-05-23 17:32 +1000

#6043 — Re: Why did Quora choose Python for its development?

On Sunday, May 22, 2011 12:44:18 AM UTC-7, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
> I've noticed that on many Perl mailing lists the list members talk very
> rarely about Python, but only on this Python mailing list I read many
> discussions about Perl, in which most of the participants use to agree that
> yes, Python is better, as it shouldn't be obvious that most of the list
> members prefer Python.

Evidently Perl users choose to bash other languages in those languages' own mailing lists.


> If Python would be so great, you wouldn't talk so much about how bad are
> other languages,

Sure we would.  Sometimes it's fun to sit on your lofty throne and scoff at the peasantry.


> or if these discussions are not initiated by envy, you would
> be also talking about how bad is Visual Basic, or Pascal, or Delphi, or who
> knows other languages.

I would suggest that envy isn't the reason, the reason is that Perl is just that much worse than Visual Basic, Pascal, and Delphi.  We only make fun of the really, really bad langauges.

(Or, less cynically, it's because Perl and Python historically filled the same niche, whereas VB, Pascal, and Delphi were often used for different sorts of programming.)


What I'm trying to say here is your logic is invalid.  People have all kinds of reasons to badmouth other languages; that some mailing list has a culture that is a bit more or a bit less approving of it than some other list tells us nothing.  In any case it's ridiculous to claim envy as factor nowadays, as Python is clearly on the rise while Perl is on the decline.  Few people are choosing Perl for new projects.


Carl Banks

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#6046

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Carl Banks <pavlovevidence@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, May 22, 2011 12:44:18 AM UTC-7, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
>> If Python would be so great, you wouldn't talk so much about how bad are
>> other languages,
>
> Sure we would.  Sometimes it's fun to sit on your lofty throne and scoff at the peasantry.

It's also fun, and sometimes productive, to sit on many different
lofty thrones, and then to have a Jedi Council meeting in which we
discuss which thrones are hard to climb onto, which ones are easy for
a child to sit on but hard to get any work done on, and which ones are
really comfortable and ergonomic, but have just that one little hard
bit to the right of where your arm wants to rest, but if you're
careful it won't jab into you too badly... and in those discussions,
Perl is a literal Swiss Army Knife. :)

> I would suggest that envy isn't the reason, the reason is that Perl is just that much worse than Visual Basic, Pascal, and Delphi.  We only make fun of the really, really bad langauges.

I'm not sure that Perl deserves to be put alongside Visual Basic. I'm
not sure that ANY language deserves that...

Chris Angelico

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