Language issues... or, "the wolf explains how Python isn't
his chosen language, using the miserable childhood as the
excuse."
Recent comments in a.l.f made me to see one
programming-related thing:
I'm too much used to C-like program style.
I didn't do enough Turbo Pascal back in the day.
Think of it: In my early programming days, I coded mostly in
Microsoft's hideous Commodore Basic. Now that was a tight
environment and no way I was able to even breathe.
Program had to be crushed. The end result was... a pile. Not
good-looking code. Just a pile of commands. That was a
particularly claustrophobic experience. At most 65536 lines.
At most 80 characters per line - if you cheat, some more,
and please do, because you really shouldn't worry
of indentation or stylistic things with this amount of
memory or with this 40-column display...
I coded in TP for some time, but relatively quickly (in less
than 2 years) I was already programming in C. I later moved
also to C++, Perl and Java. What drew me to C and relatives
was the freedom. Freedom of make the code as pretty as
possible. Pascal was better than Basic, but it wasn't always
readable or pretty. I didn't always like it. (Well, TP was
better-looking than some other dialects...)
Yesterday I saw some Basic-like code and I couldn't spot the
bug in it because I misprocessed it in my mind. That was
always a problem in Basic-like code... and it still is.
Seeing where the problems are, seeing what's going on -
that's much easier for my mind when things are written in
"the C way".
So, this is why I do Perl and not much Python. It's because
I can't see a thing! In Python - like in all procedural
languages that don't look like C - things appear to be
closer than each other. Important things are... well, near.
Python is better than TP because it isn't as
claustrophobia-inducing as other languages of its kind, but...
...I think what I'm saying is this: What comes to code
structure and layout, with Python you can build huuuge
skyscrapers with a lot of small apartments - and with Perl,
you can build everything from gigantic concert halls to
outhouses.
Maybe I'm wrong again. I know I'm definitely wrong by
posting something that looks like an Argument in This
Gigantic Language War Of Our Age.