[jimmahoney]

I teach intro programming using python, and use it regularly for various projects.

But I agree with the author's central point that the language has a number of issues.

He mentions the python2 vs python3 issues, but doesn't discuss what is to me the biggest problem of all that: there is no standard simple way to identify within the code what version of python it needs or is written for. Coming originally from the perl world, that has always seemed like a significant oversight.

Nor does he mention several of my other biggest issues with the language, such as the arbitrary assignment of some operations to global functions (i.e. a=[3,2,1]; len(a)) while others are method calls (i.e. a.reverse()) which return nothing. And then there's list(reversed(a)) and all the iterator awkwardness ...

Explaining to students learning programming for the first time why neither of these do what they expect is never fun.

    >>> print(a.reverse())
    >>> print(reversed(a))

[singularity2001]

Yes, much of what's wrong with python in one line of code: >>> reversed(a) <listreverseiterator object at 0x7f1c3bf94310>

who needs a __str__ method for listreverseiterator anyways. they cherrypicked the worst of the Java world: Unreadable names and batteries excluded. yuck!