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Python Conference Coming Soon

Posted by michael on from the strangling-the-competition dept.

nnorwitz writes "PyCon 2004 is coming to Washington, DC at the end of March. It's a great place to meet lots of smart people and learn new things. Many interesting discussions go far beyond Python into other programming languages and topics. We should find out more about the Pie-thon, the OSAF since Mitch Kapor is the keynote speaker. There may even be a few surprises. The price is only $175, but early bird registration ends soon. It's not too late to submit a presentation either. I hope to see lots of new faces this year! I want to talk to some Perl and Ruby zealots^Wconverts^Wprogrammers. :-)"

1 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Re:uhm, I'm not going from Ruby to Python by Slash.ter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I read Python books/sites and they say with a straight face "the great thing about Python is there's only one way to do things" .. what they fail to mention is, one way *per Python version*. I first used Python at 1.5 when it was pushed as a "prototyping language". I'm not coming back until they finish figuring out their object model and scoping rules.

    So you're saying Python evolves. Doesn't C, C++, Java, and ... Ruby do the same? It is easy to have many Python versions installed and usable at the same time. It is as easy to add packages to any of the installed versions. Is it easier to manage change in Ruby?

    Someday, a bright Pythoner will get hit by lightning and realize, "hey, str(obj) just calls obj.__repr__() .. why the heck don't we all just call obj.__repr__() directly? And do we really need *four* underscores? And do we really need to type 'self' all the time???" At that moment, the Rubification will begin.

    You're confusing 'str(obj)' with 'repr(obj)' but that's OK - you're Ruby Zealot. I think you're to picky and if I was as picky about Ruby, here's what I'm reading here : 'obj.__id__' is the same as 'obj#id' and 'obj.__send__' is the same as 'obj#send'. So not only that I see four underscores (was it borrowed from Python by any chance?) and two ways of doing the same (there are more examples on the web page) but there is another peculiarity: '#' has two meanings: you can use it as in 'obj#id' and you can use it to start comments!

    Now about 'self'. It comes from Smalltalk and Matz (creator of Ruby) claims that Ruby borrows ideas from Smalltalk. So I don't see your point. On top of that, you don't have to use 'self'. You can use 'this', 'that', and 'other' or even 'S' if you aim at brevity.