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Guido van Rossum Leaves Zope.com
VladDrac writes "Guido van Rossum, the author of the Python programming language, announced at OSCON last night that he's leaving zope.com, to work for a new startup called 'Elemental Security', founded by Dan Farmer (known from several security tools such as Satan). Guido leaving Zope.com will also probably mean that he will be no longer involved in Zope3 development, but hopefully he'll have more time to spend on Python development." Guido says that he's excited about his new employer, but that nothing substantial will change about Python as a result of the move. "It's just that I'll be working from the West coast." Python is "already quite secure," he says, and will be the basis of an upcoming security product ("just getting started") from Elemental.
It is a misconception that Python is not strongly typed. It is strongly typed, it is not *statically* typed.
// Java
Python is a stronly typed, dynamically typed, extremely late bound language.
Double check your facts before calling someone else a dumbass.
The difference between a dynamically typed language and a statically typed language is this:
int myvar = 1;
# Python
myvar = 1
The difference is that the Java compiler assigns a datatype to the location of myvar, but python assigns a datatype to the value held in myvar.
It's a subtle difference, and many python newbies think it's not strongly typed, however that is a mistake.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
That's funny. I switched from Perl to Python several years ago and one of the things that I like best about Python is the documentation. Perl's Camel book made a pretty fair reference, but I didn't really like busting out a hard-copy book every time I wanted to look something up. The electronic Perl documentation was pretty nice, but it wasn't quite as comprehensive as the Camel book, and the POD format simply can't compete with Python's documentation. The PDF and HTML formats are nice, but I really like the fact that the Python documentation is available in info format for easy reading in Emacs (complete with a comprehensive index). The indexes in Python's electronic documentation really make a heck of a difference once you start using them. Perl's pile o' man pages simply can't touch Python in this regard (IMHO).
Perl's TIMTOWTDI style means that every time you edit someone else's Perl code you will encounter four or five new Perlisms that you have never seen and that require the Camel book for deciphering. When I was hacking Perl, that meant carring around the Camel book in my laptop bag "just in case." With Python that's no longer a problem.
My guess is that you have gotten use to the structure of Perl's documentation. You know where to find Perl information, and are simply frustrated by the fact that Python requires that you start from scratch with a new set of documentation.
On the other hand, it is possible that we simply have different documentation requirements. What precisely is the problem? "They suck," is not particularly descriptive.