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That article makes some really good points, but I disagree. To me, Python is quickly becoming a good middle ground where I can use these powerful functional ide

That article makes some really good points, but I disagree. To me, Python is quickly becoming a good middle ground where I can use these powerful functional ideas, then drop down to imperative whenever I need to. In particular, this means that I can use Python to do scientific computing or to easily work with native libraries while still maintaining a lot of the functionality of more pure languages.

pgbovine 17y ago
agreed ... also i think the dynamically-typed nature of python (and similar languages) makes them very amenable to rapid prototyping and experimentation (code just runs without having to fight the type inferencer or checker). python lets you do clean and beautiful functional programming, but also, as you mentioned, to drop down to quick-and-dirty imperative mode the author has a good point about pure functional languages being better-suited for concurrent programming, though
- brehaut 17y ago
  Just to be clear, Clojure (and most lisps) are also dynamically typed and thus allow just the same experimental approach. Clojure and Common Lisp (I can't speak for other lisps, but I think some schemes too - PLT Scheme perhaps?) also have optional Type Hinting that allow the program to run quickly too.
twp 17y ago
Compared to traditional static languages (C++, Java), Python offers an order of magnitude of improvement in productivity. Compared to older scripting languages (Perl), Python offers a sane language and a rich programming environment. Compared to other current popular scripting languages (Ruby), Python offers a solid runtime and better out-of-the-box performance at the expense of some elegance and fluency. Comprare to some very interesting languages (Haskell, Erlang, Scala) Python is more widely available and allows you to produce good, portable, well-performing code quickly and easily. It's a state of flux. Right now Python is my language of choice (after ten years of Ruby) and it touches that sweet spot of expressiveness and performance. However, the bolted-on features (verbose object system, clumsy metaprogramming) deliberate crippling of language (e.g. one line lambdas) and the underlying message of "there's one way to do it" (which is my way, because I know better than you) will, for me, mean that eventually I will move on. More expressive, coherent and flexible languages will eventually reach Python's current level of maturity and performance, and then it will be time to switch. It could be MacRuby, Scala or F# (but probably not Haskell or Erlang). Who knows. But, for now, Python is a good choice. Edit: typos.
- foldr 17y ago
  >Compared to other current popular scripting languages (Ruby), Python offers a solid runtime and better out-of-the-box performance at the expense of some elegance and fluency. Although, Ruby doesn't have any iteration constructs as nice as Python's generators. (You could create them using call/cc, but I expect the performance would be awful).
- scythe 17y ago
  May I suggest Lua with metalua? It seems to have most of what you're looking for (and luajit is very fast).
  - krakensden 17y ago
    Lua has a library problem for many tasks.
    - scythe 17y ago
      Such as?
      - s3graham 17y ago
        Many/most libraries in Python are built in, so you don't need to hunt them down and install. More importantly your users need only have "Python", nothing more or less and don't have to fiddle to get things working.
        silentbicycle 17y ago
        But unlike Python, Lua is smaller than SQLite. You can just put it in a DLL and install it with your project. Any users that even notice it would be shocked to see how many installations of SQLite they probably have. :)
      - moe 17y ago
        I would expand that to say that lua has a standard library and framework problem. You can link any old C library but there's little uniformity in how everything fits together and rather few task-oriented packages/frameworks exist. I like lua and am using it for some tasks where I'd have used C in the past. But for many things where ruby/python have strong, pluggable libraries (e.g. everything web-related) there is simply no equivalent in lua-land. Kepler project is nowhere near a django or rails.

pgbovine 17y ago

agreed ... also i think the dynamically-typed nature of python (and similar languages) makes them very amenable to rapid prototyping and experimentation (code just runs without having to fight the type inferencer or checker). python lets you do clean and beautiful functional programming, but also, as you mentioned, to drop down to quick-and-dirty imperative mode the author has a good point about pure functional languages being better-suited for concurrent programming, though

brehaut 17y ago
Just to be clear, Clojure (and most lisps) are also dynamically typed and thus allow just the same experimental approach. Clojure and Common Lisp (I can't speak for other lisps, but I think some schemes too - PLT Scheme perhaps?) also have optional Type Hinting that allow the program to run quickly too.

twp 17y ago

Compared to traditional static languages (C++, Java), Python offers an order of magnitude of improvement in productivity. Compared to older scripting languages (Perl), Python offers a sane language and a rich programming environment. Compared to other current popular scripting languages (Ruby), Python offers a solid runtime and better out-of-the-box performance at the expense of some elegance and fluency. Comprare to some very interesting languages (Haskell, Erlang, Scala) Python is more widely available and allows you to produce good, portable, well-performing code quickly and easily. It's a state of flux. Right now Python is my language of choice (after ten years of Ruby) and it touches that sweet spot of expressiveness and performance. However, the bolted-on features (verbose object system, clumsy metaprogramming) deliberate crippling of language (e.g. one line lambdas) and the underlying message of "there's one way to do it" (which is my way, because I know better than you) will, for me, mean that eventually I will move on. More expressive, coherent and flexible languages will eventually reach Python's current level of maturity and performance, and then it will be time to switch. It could be MacRuby, Scala or F# (but probably not Haskell or Erlang). Who knows. But, for now, Python is a good choice. Edit: typos.

foldr 17y ago
>Compared to other current popular scripting languages (Ruby), Python offers a solid runtime and better out-of-the-box performance at the expense of some elegance and fluency. Although, Ruby doesn't have any iteration constructs as nice as Python's generators. (You could create them using call/cc, but I expect the performance would be awful).
scythe 17y ago
May I suggest Lua with metalua? It seems to have most of what you're looking for (and luajit is very fast).
- krakensden 17y ago
  Lua has a library problem for many tasks.
  - scythe 17y ago
    Such as?
    - s3graham 17y ago
      Many/most libraries in Python are built in, so you don't need to hunt them down and install. More importantly your users need only have "Python", nothing more or less and don't have to fiddle to get things working.
      - silentbicycle 17y ago
        But unlike Python, Lua is smaller than SQLite. You can just put it in a DLL and install it with your project. Any users that even notice it would be shocked to see how many installations of SQLite they probably have. :)
    - moe 17y ago
      I would expand that to say that lua has a standard library and framework problem. You can link any old C library but there's little uniformity in how everything fits together and rather few task-oriented packages/frameworks exist. I like lua and am using it for some tasks where I'd have used C in the past. But for many things where ruby/python have strong, pluggable libraries (e.g. everything web-related) there is simply no equivalent in lua-land. Kepler project is nowhere near a django or rails.