Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.python > #46407 > unrolled thread

Re: How clean/elegant is Python's syntax?

Back to article view | Back to comp.lang.python

This discussion starts older than the indexed window; earlier articles aren't shown. The article labeled Started by below is the oldest one visible, not the original post.

Contents

  Re: How clean/elegant is Python's syntax? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-05-30 04:54 +1000
    Re: How clean/elegant is Python's syntax? Walter Hurry <walterhurry@lavabit.com> - 2013-05-29 21:01 +0000
      Re: How clean/elegant is Python's syntax? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-05-30 13:57 +1000

#46407 — Re: How clean/elegant is Python's syntax?

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:37 AM, Ma Xiaojun <damage3025@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, Python has much more libraries. But it seems that Python is more
> useful and suitable in CLI and Web applications. People are still
> discussing whether to replace tkinter with wxPython or not. VB and VFP
> people are never bothered with such issue.

Let me put this debate in context by giving an analogous example. A
while back, it was loudly proclaimed that it was far easier to write
iPhone apps than Android ones, because Android apps had to worry about
a variety of different screen resolutions/sizes, while iPhone ones
could be certain of what they were going to get. But what this really
meant was that writing for iPhone was equivalent to writing for
"Android on phone model XYZ", and that you could, by targeting
Android, also then make your app available on a bunch of other phone
models by simply dealing with the differences.

Python gives you a lot more choice than VB does. With Visual BASIC, if
you don't like the windowing toolkit, tough. You don't have any
alternative. With Python, you can pretend it's like VB by simply
picking one toolkit and ignoring all the others; it'll be exactly the
same. But the benefit is that, if you decide you want one of the
others, it's relatively cheap to switch.

That said, though, GUIs and databasing are two of the areas where I
think Python's standard library could stand to be improved a bit.
There are definitely some rough edges there.

ChrisA

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#46412

On Thu, 30 May 2013 04:54:44 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

<snip>
> GUIs and databasing are two of the areas where I
> think Python's standard library could stand to be improved a bit.
> There are definitely some rough edges there.

Dunno what you mean about "standard library", but I'm very happy with 
wxPython and psycopg2 for GUIs and databasing respectively.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#46429

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 7:01 AM, Walter Hurry <walterhurry@lavabit.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 30 May 2013 04:54:44 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
> <snip>
>> GUIs and databasing are two of the areas where I
>> think Python's standard library could stand to be improved a bit.
>> There are definitely some rough edges there.
>
> Dunno what you mean about "standard library", but I'm very happy with
> wxPython and psycopg2 for GUIs and databasing respectively.

They are not part of the standard library. Yes, Python is strongly
enhanced by additional packages off PyPI, but that's not the same
thing; if I publish a program that requires psycopg2, I can't simply
say "go get Python from your OS's repository or python.org", I have to
also instruct people to install another package. On Debian, I can
simply apt-get python-psycopg2, which I would trust to be (a) a stable
build, (b) compatible with the apt-gettable python (which is 2.7.3;
ditto python3-psycopg2 and python3, for 3.2.3), and (c) from an
authoritative source. There's probably a way to do this for other
Linuxes too, but I don't know the exact package names everywhere. And
on Windows, I have no idea what the best way would be.

These days, networking is considered essential. Python's standard
library includes basic sockets, HTTP (client and server), etc. AFAIK
Python doesn't have obscurities like DNS (obviously you can connect a
socket by hostname, but you can't look up an SPF record, nor can you
write a DNS server), but networking generally is considered important
enough to be inbuilt. Why is databasing second-class?

ChrisA

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Back to top | Article view | comp.lang.python

csiph-web