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by mahmud 5761 days ago
I can't speak for him, but it looks a lot like my pre-code scribbles. As someone who takes pride in being a fleshware translator of pseudo-code to real-code, I feel indignant at the sight of executable, Englishy specification.

High praise or a heavy put-down?

Also, I seem to hold the Guy Steele languages in highest regard, and consider the rest passable toys. C, Common Lisp, Scheme, Java, Fortran .. somehow they feel real. You crack open the spec and you're quickly welcomed into an intelligent dialog with the best minds in systems programming. I read several chapters of the Java spec last night and learned more about the language in one night than weeks of "googling" Ruby. The GSL-school of specification is precise, uses a well established vocabulary, and explains the syntactic and semantic rules of the language, along with their required execution environment. Not a word is said about add-on packages, installation crap, compiler internals or how to fork the language on github.

Compare these two and see what I mean:

http://docs.python.org/reference/index.html

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/j3TOC....

See how much more detailed the Java specification is; although the language has more features, the spec manages to be much more succinct and precise. The Python spec is littered with references to "CPython" and the internals of an specific compiler.
2 comments
mikeklaas 5761 days ago
You are the first person I've encountered that thinks ill of the fact that Python reads like pseudo code.

In my mind, it does it in a way that remains succinct and strict, thus avoiding the abomination of "enlishy" code (AppleScript, SQL to some extent, etc.)

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mahmud 5761 days ago
It was an earned compliment, given in reluctance.
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josephholsten 5761 days ago
> it looks a lot like my pre-code scribbles

Absolutely, and I mostly write ruby. I actually love that about python. But it feels optimized for writing code with a pen, not with a keyboard. Come to think of it, I don't prefer either for the reading of other's code. But ruby and perl seem to flow from my keys much more naturally than python.

Maybe if I switch from vi to emacs I'll change my tune? ;)

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