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Opinions on Scala aside, it should be said that Python isn't the epitome of conciseness that a lot of people think it is. There are more concise languages out t
by 59nadir 10y ago
Opinions on Scala aside, it should be said that Python isn't the epitome of conciseness that a lot of people think it is. There are more concise languages out there and languages that are as concise as Python that end up offering more elsewhere.
- lmm 10y agoThere are languages that use a denser notation than Python for the same number of syntactic elements, but I don't think many allow you to express the same things in fewer elements. It's famous for looking like pseudocode, which suggests it contains exactly the information that humans need to communicate.
- 59nadir 10y agoI would argue that pseudocode doesn't present the "end goal" of readable brevity. Without getting into specifics all too much, an example of things that can make code much shorter, yet readable, is piping data through a series of functions, which is something that Python doesn't allow without repetition, as far as I know. There are lots and lots of things you could point to. I don't think the point is to change Python, but I do feel that people who are too snowed in could accept that the time wherein Python was the most concise, yet readable language has passed quite a while ago, so it might be less of an argument for Python than they'd think. The same will end up happening with the "ecosystem argument" as well, by the way. It will be touted as Python's greatest strength 10 years into the future when it no longer holds true, but since it's something that's been repeated for tens of years it'll still be repeated, based solely on history.