[KirinDave]

> I'm not really sure what your point is in criticizing "farming" to C.

If Python is so great how come it can't even express a decent data structure that it needs? I'll happily level the same criticism at Ruby if you like.

> You made a false claim.

Firstly: This is not High School Debate Club. There isn't some kind of point system. Language and expectations like this are not only counterproductive (in that they essentially turn every conversation into a series of verbal ripostes in which the goal is to be most right rather than *learn the most) they're also tedious and unwelcome.

> You referred to Python iteration as not generic,

I did not. I said list comprehensions weren't generic, and then I tried to explain my complaint. It may be that someone has done a legendary feat of going through and creating a bunch of mixins for some of the gaps in the list comprehension coverage such that you can find some way to override how non-determinism is expressed. If so, please point me to it.

[CogitoCogito]

> If Python is so great how come it can't even express a decent data structure that it needs?

Why is this a requirement of a "great" language? By not requiring a language to be self-hosting, you are adding more degrees of freedom to your language's design, so I could even see an argument that writing it in C is an improvement. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I don't see why cpython written in C implies it is a bad language. Maybe you could elucidate your thinking?

[pvg]

you are adding more degrees of freedom to your language's design

Why do you think that? Languages/runtimes with high C integration and fairly exposed C bowels like Python and Ruby have, over time, turned out to be very hard to evolve compatibly.

[CogitoCogito]

> Why do you think that?

Because it's a fact? With cpython you can develop things in python if that suits you or C if that suits you. You have more freedom to choose what fits your use case. I'm not saying this is necessarily good, but I don't think it's obviously bad. I'd like to hear from people who think it's the case.

> Languages/runtimes with high C integration and fairly exposed C bowels like Python and Ruby have, over time, turned out to be very hard to evolve compatibly.

That is true, but it's also arguably one of the reasons cpython became so popular in the first place. The ability to write C-extensions when appropriate has been very powerful. It's certainly caused issues, but I think if python didn't have exposed bowels it may never have become nearly as popular. What if numpy wasn't ever written? (This isn't to say that they couldn't have exposed a better C-api with fewer issues, but hindsight is 20/20...)

[pvg]

I guess I don't understand how 'the design gets stuck in amber' (which you seem to agree with) and 'gives you lots of design degrees of freedom' can be true at the same time.

[feanaro]

It gives you flexibility in writing libraries while making it harder to design a new compatible runtime. That said, PyPy has achieved pretty good C extension support while making the language faster.

[pvg]

The claim was 'degrees of freedom in your language's design'. It's an odd one because the history of a bunch of similar languages has been exactly the opposite. Compare, say, JS to Ruby and Python. Even with the seemingly crippling burden of browser compatibility, Javascript has evolved out of its various design and implementation ruts a lot more gracefully than either Ruby or Python.

[Chris2048]

> Language and expectations like this are not only counterproductive ... they're also tedious and unwelcome.

Who gets to be the language police? I'm fine with "High School Debate" but "verbal ripostes in which the goal is to be most right rather than learn the most" is not an accurate description of that.

[KirinDave]

You can do this if you like. In the past, I'm guilty of it as well.

But I won't engage with someone who does this the same way, because they're not engaging me as a human. Unless, of course, they're already dehumanizing me (as occasionally happens on this website) and then I don't feel quite so bad about it.

[pvg]

If Python is so great how come it can't even express a decent data structure that it needs?

I'm sure you know this is a deliberate design choice/tradeoff. It's arguably turned out to be a bit of a millstone for languages that eventually want to grow up to be general-purpose-ish, but that wasn't as obvious at the time.

[KirinDave]

Yes, I do. I admit, that was uncharitable of me.

I remember having similar conversations with the creator of Io and seeing the Pike mailing list have similar concerns. Hindsight is 20/20.