Re: [SLUG] Semi-experienced Python Programmers?

From: Paul M Foster (paulf@quillandmouse.com)
Date: Wed Jan 30 2008 - 15:41:32 EST


On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 02:39:48PM -0500, Dylan William Hardison wrote:

> C++ or Java being the primary programming language of a programmer would be
> scary. Python at least supports (some) functional programming paradigms.
>
> Now, of course a common retort for this would be to say the the type
> system of
> C++ or Java is superior to Python's dynamic typing.
> That is an unwise argument, since if strong, static typing were important,
> one
> should use one of the ML languages or Haskell.
>
> (Of course, the world would be a better place everything was written in
> haskell. Perhaps this day will come to pass!)
>

Ugh, functional programming. Interesting geeky idea, but not for a general
purpose programming language. If I'm going to perform a task, in code or
in life, I'm going to proceed on a step-by-step basis, describing each
step in order and using the results from prior steps in executing the
following steps. Functional programming only barely adheres to that
paradigm. I'd have to think an entirely different way about life or coding
tasks in order to implement functional programming. But I don't wanna.

As far as I can tell, the only widely accepted "major" paradigm shift in
programming languages in the last 35 years (how long I've been coding) has
been object oriented programming. Thus we see C++ and Java (and bolt-ons
to PHP, Perl, Python and the like) shouldering more and more of the
programming code written.

(Dynamic typing and garbage collection don't count as major paradigm
shifts since the only reason they exist is because of the advance of CPU
power and memory. Object orientation doesn't need those enhancements to
exist.)

Paul

-- 
Paul M. Foster
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked
Knowledge Systems (NKS).  Views and opinions expressed in messages
posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 20:28:56 EDT