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The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham
GnuVince writes "Paul Graham has posted a new article to his website that he called "The Python Paradox" which refines the statements he made in "Great Hackers" about Python programmers being better hackers than Java programmers. He basically says that since Python is not the kind of language that lands you a job like Java, those who learn it seek more than simply financial benefits, they seek better tools. Very interesting read."
Python is not the kind of language that lands you a job like Java
Because otherwise, the business world would be that much less bass-ackwards.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
...a civil discussion will ensue.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Right on. I wish employers/customers would take a look at the verity of your programming skills and not the number of years programming in one language. So what if you have 10 years of programming VB. Even if you have to program a VB app if you see a person with 3 years experience in VB and 7 Years in a buch of other languages it shows that this guy know how to program and is flexible to work around problems. Unlike possibly the 10 year VB guy who knows all the prebuilt widgets but something outside those widgets becomes impossible for him. I can't even count the number of times I helped people program on languages that I never used before (and they were soposed to be the experts) (I even helped out the Microsoft Guy in the 2003 Linux world expo in .Net) It is because I know a lot of languages and I can use concepts from the different ones and relate it to different languages. I also hate it when a customer tells you that they need an application written in this language to do this. My view is use the correct language for the job and I hate being forced to use a language that is not well optimized for the job. It is like someone telling someone when they build a house that they have to use this screwdriver and only this screwdriver to build a house. Someone who is truly a professional knows the different tools available and will use them when needed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
I like Python because I can figure out what's going on. If you know C, then it is not hard to trace what happens at the lowest levels since the C-Python is written in a remarkably clean C and very well documented. So it's a simple, powerful, easy to read language where you have some assurance of being able to track down most problems. My experience with Java was quite the opposite - every Java book I read always had mysterious claims about threads, JVM, synchronization, garbage collection that seemed like some sort of "insider knowledge" and I was expected to just believe it. So I think it's not just about the language itself as much as it is about the implementation; for me at least.
I will bask in the irrelevance of your glorious, insightful comment.
(Come back when you RTFA, or even RTF-summary, ya hear?)
We used to script most of our processes (digital chip design) with Perl. In reality, only a few people really bothered automating boring tasks. At one point I started writing everything in Python because of all the good reasons (readability, easy to learn and MUCH easier to maintain later on) and gradually spread the gospel. As very nice side effect is that my collegues are much more likely to get their hands dirty themselves and write scripts with it's useful. Anyway, as for the article: I think a language shouldn't only be beautiful in the way it allows one to express intent, but also or even much more so in the way it looks esthetically. This is one of the biggest problems I have with Lisp (after reading Paul Graham's other articles, I bought this ANSI Common Lisp Book and printed out out 'On Lisp'). It's a fascinating language, but it looks to incredibly dense. Sigh.
I''ll be willing to buy his theory that python hackers are better than java hackers...
I think the main reason I write so much stuff in Python and pretty much nothing in Java is simple: Open source and comprehensive standard library.
When I did have to write something in Java - well, better hope you have the right API. Oh, and what's the difference between the 3587324 different XML parsing packages? Oh and download Java Super Micro PDA Library! Only available for Solaris and Windows!
The promise of "write-once-run-anywhere" was pretty much dead. Not that I was even going for portability - I just wanted it to run on Linux. And I wanted to do it without having to download Beans, Java DynamicManagement, Java Metadata, ad nauseum.
Python, on the other hand, simply works. Sure, it doesn't have a standard GUI toolkit (although wxPython is pretty much the de facto standard now...), but it does everything I need it to do. With a clean, nice syntax, no less.
Oh, and I still don't get how Java doesn't let you write a freakin routine to get the permissions on a file without resorting to writing a C function. Sure, it's not "portable", but just do what Perl and Python have done - on platforms with no permissions, return a sane default value. Don't just NOT include the function at all...
Anyway, forgive my rant. Python - good standard library. Java - tons of confusing frameworks and platforms, etc, etc.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
You can put Java on your resume to get the job, and then use Python to glue components together!
All kidding aside, I am currently working on a pretty complex java project. I've written various small programs as utilities, and these programs would have been better off as scripts accessing some of the java classes I had already written.
The downside of java -- in this circumstance --- was having to deal with classpath and compiling cycles and whatnot. What I really wanted was to write the program/script easily, have it leverage what I had already done, and not bloat the resulting .jar files with little utility programs that would be better off as scripts.
I learned Python a little too late for this project, but you can bet your ass Jython will be embedded in my next.
The Army reading list
Interestingly enough, knowing Python did get me a job... My company works a lot with Java too, but my job specifically deals with about 90% Python, and 10% Java... I never thought there was a use for it when I learned it in University...
Too bad I'm maintaining code with two letter variable names all the time though, and now it's soured the language for me as well... heh.
But to motivate you to do what? Look at what people do for money. Look at the things people do never receiving a dime for it.
There are some serious qualitative differences between those two global groups of actions. It seems more often the case that great art comes from subsistence funding, just enough to allow the creator to live while he/she creates. Additional funds don't have any where near the impact they do in so many other endeavors. In fact, if you look through large grant artwork, one might even conclude there is a negative impact.
Well this is kinda the point of the article.
A person who is apathetic to programming will learn whatever pays the most. While a person who loves to program will study and learn different tools and explore them to advance themselfs.
It is like a person who brushes his teath to avoid the pain of cavities. VS. a person who brushes their teeth because the like the clean taist in their mouth. Who will have better oral health, the later because brushing teeth is a joy for him while the first guy will just do it enough.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
We're both obscure AND poorly-paid!
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
Who says Python is not good for getting jobs? I know at least 2 places in New York City where you should send your resume, if you are a good Python hacker: http://www.wirelessgeneration.com/ and http://www.divmod.org/ (also .com).
Simpy
The immense number of system and third party libraries is what keeps most Java developers coding Java. The close second is Java developer's tools. Until there is an IDE for Python that's as extensive, capable and sophisticated as Eclipse I'm going to stay with Java. Most Java development is in the enterprise server side space and the sheer amount of tools that Java offers is just mind boggling.
Also us, enterprise developers tend to work in environments that are much more conservative from the technology standpoint (banking, insurance, brokerage). As far as I'm concerned it's a big win for us that we got Cobol elbowed out with Java. Trying to push the language of the month at those executives will cause us more harm than good.
I know that Python has some very nice features (I read the tutorial) but it's hardly the sort of paradigm shift that merits ditching Java and rewriting everything because of some neat syntax flavoring. Besides Java is hardly a frozen language and we have some exciting stuff coming down the pipe here. JDK 1.5 will introduce shared VM model which may make java compeling on the desktop, more elaborate iterators, annotations (my favourie in 1.5), and generics (although without primitive types support they are kinda lame).
Java is now frequently used in CS research as well. It looks almost certain that the next milestone in CS evolution will come in the form of Aspect Oriented Programming and AspectJ has been the leading implementation.
Sometimes it feels that Paul G. just has an ax to grind into the collective Java community but I wonder how closely did he actually look at Java before dismissing it?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I'm a Python programmer. I never learned Java because I heard so many people complain about how many books and reference materials they need just to get things done.
What I don't understand is why I even need Java? Jython let's me do pretty much everything Java can do, in a language that is a lot simpler that "fits in my head", not fits in a huge bookshelf. Sure I still need to know a bit about Java classes and such, but it's a lot less work than my friends who program in Java have to do. I feel sometimes like I'm watching people hike up to the top of a mountain every day, while I just take a 4x4 and get to the same place, but get there faster and with a lot less sweat and effort.
Can anyone who codes both in Python and Java educate me?
Ruby on Rails Screencast
> Don't really see how you can compare
> a scripting language with an OO
> development language.
Hm. I think the line between the two is getting pretty blurry. I mean... Ruby and Python are both "scripting languages", but folks have done some pretty impressive object-oriented apps with both of them. Also, the larger a Java app gets, the more it seems that it uses Class.forName and dynamic this-and-thats to work around static typing and such.
I think that "scripting" vs "OO development" language may still be a useful distinction, but it might be more clear when comparing, say, AWK to Java, not Ruby to Java.
The Army reading list
n 1960, a researcher interviewed 1500 business-school students and
classified them in two categories: those who were in it for the
money - 1245 of them - and those who were going to use the degree to do
something they cared deeply about - the other 255 people. Twenty years
later, the researcher checked on the graduates and found that 101 of
them were millionaires?and all but one of those millionaires came from
the 255 people who had pursued what they loved to do!
Research on more than 400,000 Americans over the past 40 years
indicates that pursuing your passions - even in small doses, here and
there each day - helps you make the most of your current capabilities
and encourages you to develop new ones.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
It's a fine line semantically between discrimination and bigotry. But it's a necessary part of life to discriminate, you can hardly avoid it on one level or another. But if you ask someone why they made a discrimination between various options, they can give you their reasons. Bigots for the most part will reply with that's juat the way it is, and will be unable to ellucidate the path their reasoning took to the discrimination. Why don't you want your daugther to marry person of race X? I just don't, it's wrong. Etc., etc. Graham gives some decent reasons, so I would hardly call him a language bigot.
I like python because it allows you to modify the behavior of the language constructs. It gives you hooks into what happens when you say 'print myvariable' or what goes on when you retrieve 'mydict[ "something" ]'.
Much like operator overloading in C++, this allows you to write in the language of the problem, rather than the language of the language. So, if you're dealing with dates you can overload the minus operator to calculate the time between two dates when they are subtracted. Or if you are dealing with complex numbers your operators do the right thing when you add a complex and a real.
Similarly, in Python you can create a database search object that behaves like an associative array. So, customer_id_search[ 10 ] goes to the database, retrieves the record for customer_id 10 and returns a DAO to be manipulated.
Iterators and many other constructs help you in writing clear, concise, MAINTAINABLE, extensible and reusable code by allowing you to code clearly in the language of the problem you are trying to solve.
Python Rules, Perl Sucks.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
First we hear is't a huge disadvantage when a programmer doesn't know the business-side of software development. And now it's the other way around.
I'm confused.
Me
I use Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme...
Out of those, Python is probably the least Lisp-like, and the worst designed (well, okay, yes, Perl's design is *much* worst, but it can be massaged into doing lots of cool stuff).
Yet PG brings it up all the time when he talks about Lisp. To me Lisp and Python are like night and day. How do you create anonymous functions and pass them as variables in Python? You can't, only "lambda *expressions*" which is a strange and arbitrary distinction. In Lisp, creating functions on the fly is the norm. Python doesn't have macros, or even blocks like smalltalk or Ruby, which again is one of the best things about Lisp, allowing you abstract and refactor the flow of code itself. In Python, you have arbitrary but fixed structures bolted on, like comprehensions, or tuples. In Lisp, you can create new constructs on the fly, using the same syntax as everything else.
In my opinion Python is like the Java of the open source world: tons of people use it, they think it's great because it's a lot better than whatever they used last year (C++, Perl, etc), and they don't realize (or care) there are better languages that can help them work faster.
Maybe Paul should adjust his spiel to simply say: the more obscure a language a person has mastered, the more likely he is a smart self-motivated programmer.
But even that isn't true all the time...
This article had no basis for its argument other than the opinion that Python programmers are smarter because they seek the language out (and the language rocks!). This whole argument belittles the fact that there are some amazingly talented Java programmers out there. There are great things going on in the world of Jakarta.apache.org and things like Hibernate and Spring rock! Hey aspect oriented programming was formalized by Java people. Java is heavy handed, and for projects that don't require a week or more of design and analysis prep, Java is usually a dumb idea. It is weak in the thick client area, as well. But hey, Java is cool with me. Let the language meet the need, and if you think something is cumbersome, I bet youre using it for the wrong purpose.
"Because it is not as strong a language or development platform as Java"
Oh, bullshit.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
Paul's Python summation is brilliant. As a Perl programmer who is embracing Python programming (for interest in *learning a better tool*...), I found his article to be the single most useful document on the internet about getting started with Python. Comparing structures to other languages helped greatly.
By looking at the article I was able to quickly gauge the amount that I need to learn to learn basic Python... needless to say, it will not be a very far stretch. I am sure that I have a lot to learn, but this easily cut weeks of trial and error off of my learning curve. I can't thank him enough. I am excited.
CVB(Neil P. Davis)
free ipod and free gmail!
I'm not a programmer, I'm just an engineer who can do impressions when he has to. This language is relatively simple and organized and, with the growing number of math and scientific libraries available, it's becoming more and more a regular tool in my arsenal.
I guess the point I'm making is that this language has a strong appeal to people like myself who are just looking to use it to solve problems and/or make problem solving tools. I don't know anything about Java, but maybe the reason that the author feels that Python has the better hackers is because Python, by virtue of it's simplicity and no-nonsense syntax, tends to attract your more "problem solver" type person.
Just a thought.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Pardon me while I go build a better mouse trap, pontificate on how much better it is and what a great mouse catcher I am, and then put it in my hamster's cage to prove it.
And there in lies the greatest paradox. If companies employed people who knew python, everyone would learn it!!
What he's really advocating is use of unknown programming languages. Thats fine, but maitainability might become an issue simply because it is hard to find the people that code in it.
No-ones been hurt by sticking with the mainstream.
Hmm...let's see.
Both languages have a virtual machine.
Both languages can use JIT compilers for improved efficiency.
Both languages support OO development.
Both languages have large standard libraries.
Both are turing complete.
Even their performance is similar.
Please explain how this is an inappropriate comparison.
*sigh* back to work...
When I'm looking to hire a programmer, I'm looking for one thing. Adaptability.
In my job, I've used C++, Objective-C, COM, C#, Lisp and Python. The theme here is utility. I try to use the best, most natural language for the task at hand. I don't need to work beside evangalists, I want people who see programming languages as what they are ... components in a toolbox. You choose the one appropriate for the job.
Anyway, something like that. Here is the closest he comes to a paradox:
First, employers are always looking for people who go above and beyond the bare-minimum, including people who like what they're doing enough to do it even when they aren't paid. That doesn't constitute a paradox. Second, as soon as people widely believe that it is a good standard for hiring programmers (meaning it really is the language to learn to get a job), people will start learning it merely to get a job, so I'm not sure his statement really even makes sense.
So, while I'm not saying anything about his statement that python programmers are better (since I'm not a very good programmer in any sense, and wouldn't know to argue), describing it as a "paradox" seems like pseudo-intellectual camouflage for a "Python RULES!" article.
[reposted because my original parent got modded into oblivion]
;-)
I like python because it allows you to modify the behavior of the language constructs. It gives you hooks into what happens when you say 'print myvariable' or what goes on when you retrieve 'mydict[ "something" ]'.
Much like operator overloading in C++, this allows you to write in the language of the problem, rather than the language of the language. So, if you're dealing with dates you can overload the minus operator to calculate the time between two dates when they are subtracted. Or if you are dealing with complex numbers your operators do the right thing when you add a complex and a real.
Similarly, in Python you can create a database search object that behaves like an associative array. So, customer_id_search[ 10 ] goes to the database, retrieves the record for customer_id 10 and returns a DAO to be manipulated.
Iterators and many other constructs help you in writing clear, concise, MAINTAINABLE, extensible and reusable code by allowing you to code clearly in the language of the problem you are trying to solve.
Python Rules, Perl Sucks.
tcA thgirypoC muinnelliM latigiD eht detaloiv tsuj evah uoY
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
I personally find the main claim, that Python programmers are just naturally the smartest people on earth, to be rather offensive.
I consider myself a pretty good programmer. I otherwise fit the criteria he lists in that I do a lot of programming for fun, and like to explore new languages...
but not Python. And you know why? It sounds petty and stupid, but I just hate the whitespace indenting. I have always thought that perfect code readability relied on the felxibility to format certain sections of code differently than others, and the need to have indenting control grouping of statements has always been way too rigid for my tastes.
So there you go, that's why one Java programmer is not into Python at all (not even Jython).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
ahhh, Slashdot, the place where "Oh, bullshit" is an insightful comment.
Not trolling here, but this opinion piece is stupid. Hell, just look at that quote above. "He couldn't be a first rate hacker since he obviously chose NT voluntarily." According to the author, there's no way to succeed if you choose to build on NT.
Knowing Python doesn't make you a "first rate hacker". Any decent programmer can pick up a language like python in a day or two. A good hacker (i.e. a programmer that a company would want to hire) is someone who can take their previous experience and apply that to the problem at hand, using the tools available. Saying "...but I know Python" is the same as saying "...but I know Assembly" when you have a bunch of C++ code to write.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
So, following this hypothesis, the tools for the Brainfuck programming language should be best of all? I've -never- seen a BF job posting.
Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language
... def __add__(self, b): ... if self==2: ... return self ... return int.__add__(self, b) ...
Which is which? Python is at least as OO as java. Even ints are objects.
>>> a=2
>>> a+1
3
>>> a.__add__(1) # used by + operator
3
>>> class my_int(int):
>>> a=my_int(2)
>>> a+1
2
>>> a+2
2
>>> a=my_int(1)
>>> a+1
2
>>> a+2
3
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Don't really see how you can compare a scripting language with an OO development language.
Python clearly is an object-oriented development language; it even has multiple inheritance. Python is pretty close in its semantics to Smalltalk, and there are several native compilers and environments for Python. So, Python really is much more than a "scripting language".
It's not clear that Java should even be called "object oriented". Alan Kay said "I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." Well, Java's object system is even more restrictive than C++'s.
So, yes, it does make sense to talk about Java and Python and compare them.
" ahhh, Slashdot, the place where "Oh, bullshit" is an insightful comment."
Oh, bullshit.
The value added to an organization from a good hacker, doesn't come from the number of lines of code per day, of number of functions implemented per day, but from the design and programming leaps he or she can add .
If you know Python, it's either because you had time to learn it out of curiousity, or because you needed to learn it for work or school. In either case, your value in terms of innovation has not changed. Maybe your ability to deliver those innovations quickly has, but that still doesn't make or break your value to a business. Is the fact that you learned it for fun a difference? Sure it is, but the same applies to people who learned Java for fun.
If your like me, and you do know Python, and it makes you smile every time you write something, and your employer accepts it because things are getting done, then great. But a number of people feel the same way about Java.
Is the average Pythoneer better than the average Java hacker? It's a meaningless question.
Now, Python is "esoteric." Esoteric?!? Them's fightin' words! Python is for everybody, and one of the easiest languages to learn.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I know religious wars are traditional here on Slashdot, but saying that Python is better than Java, or that Java is better than Python, well, it's like saying Audis are better than BMW's. It's a matter of personal taste, and no more than that.
Name me ONE TASK that Python (or Java) can do that the other can't. There isn't one. Tell me which one is faster! On modern equipment, you won't notice any difference for most tasks. You'd have to find something massively computationally intensive to get any sort of reasonable comparison, and even then it would be tough.
In the end, it comes down to this: what is your personal coding style? What sort of syntax are you most comfortable with? If you come from a scripting background, you'll probably like Python better. If you're coming from a C background and love those curly brackets and semicolons, you'll dig Java (that's my personal preference, by the way, I'm uncomfortable with using indentation to manage blocks, for example). Maybe something in one library or the other is attractive to you. Maybe you just want to use Open Source.
It's all just a matter of taste.
Having said that, the original article was dead wrong about one other thing. The idea that Python attracts "smarter coders" because they're doing it for the love of it is misguided. The reason is, there are smart coders writing for the love of both languages; Java only gets more idiots because there's money in it. So the author SHOULD have said "If you use Python, you'll get far fewer applicants, so it'll be easier to filter out the hacks".
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I think more people who are java programmers should be trying Python for smaller programs, cause I was able to pump small programs out much faster than with Java.
I think this point is interesting. Paul Graham makes a big deal about why he doesn't think much of Java, and it all seems to go back to the big/small issue. For example, in his essay on how he put together the Yahoo stores using Lisp, he mentioned that interpreted languages (or at least languages that can be both interpreted and compiled like Lisp) are better because they let you do things incrementally, as opposed to languages such as C/Java/etc, which force you to do the whole project all at once(I'm generalizing his statements here, but that seemed to be the gist of it).
My point is this: Graham seems to really like the "small is better" approach, for which interpreted languages really shine. For larger projects, Java/C++/etc. would (might?) be more appropriate, but for Graham's projects and ideas, not really relevant.
Every once in a while, Graham comes out with something that seems to get Java users up in arms, but it's entirely possible he's operating from point-of-view that involves projects that Java wasn't really designed for to begin with.
Just a curiousity I thought I'd note.
--Erik
A person who is apathetic to programming will learn whatever pays the most. While a person who loves to program will study and learn different tools and explore them to advance themselfs
that statement is bullshit in the purest sense. Could it be that nobody is learning python because they can already do whatever needs to be done in other languages? Programmers are king when it comes to inefficiency. Go to sourceforge and you will find 10-20 programs doing basically the same thing. Every year someone creates a new language, that does that same thing as the 50 other languages that already exist, and when they are asked why nobody uses it they give you that quote above. bullspit indeed.
did you forget to take your meds?
Quite simply, those who do things becasue they love them tend to do them better than those who do them because they have to. So yes, this would seem to imply that those who use Python (a language that's just now gaining ground) tend to be more skilled than those who use Java (a language that can make you money). ...not a rule, per say, but I can see the potential for truth in it.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Google turned this up, which cites a source: http://www.mindview.net/WebLog/log-0037
That example seems a bit selective to me. Code blocks are nice given the rest of the way that Ruby is designed to make them useful and handy, but I don't think it's necessarily superior. Personally I'm a great fan of Ruby for it's consistency, which I suppose it inherited from Smalltalk. I really like being able to deal with anything in the same way, without having to worry that there might be exceptions.
I've been using Python as my favourite scripting language for several years -- it's a neat language to code in. Recently though, I had a situation where I wanted to make adjustments to the String metaclass, and I hit a brick wall. Python's consistent in most places, and getting even moreso over time, but there are some bits of it that completely conflict with everything else. If you hit one of them it can be quite frustrating.
Switching to try the same thing in Ruby, I found that the consistency between standard library classes and everything else made it so much easier. In my Python version, I had to design a wrapper around a string, which is very yucky because I really want all strings to act a certain way - not just those that I remember to put a wrapper around. With Ruby it was just a matter of re-declaring the String and adding the methods I wanted.
I agree with most everything you say, but I don't think Design Patterns is a good example.
It weighs in at 395 pages, which isn't the thinnest but way short of the 1000 page plus behemoths you're talking about.
Most of that page count is actually showing you example implementations (in C++ and SmallTalk). Sure, you could leave those out, but examples are useful when your book is about abstract concepts.
This book is worth its (light) weight in gold.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
From http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html :
...
I've never written a Java program, never more than glanced over reference books about it
Do I need to add more?
From my own work experience, I think he is right (in some situations). There certainly are many great hackers I've worked with whose technical skills I respect but I would never want to work with again. Of course, I've also worked with a lot of great hackers who were also great employees, so it can go either way. But any hiring manager (or any employee for that matter) would be wise to remember that the person's technical skills are only part of a bigger picture.
Consider that Graham's premiere hack was Yahoo! Stores. It wasn't a huge project in LOC count (PG says this is because it was in Lisp). However, it was big enough that Yahoo! had trouble reimplementing it in more conventional languages (and in the end, actually wrote a simple lisp interpreter to handle part of it).
Yahoo! Stores wasn't a "small" project by any sense of the word. Maybe the upper boundries of "medium."
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
One approach to "compile-time" problems with python is to treat pychecker as your compiler. Basically, it looks for all those typos that C etc catch due to requiring variable declarations, and a whole lot more. Unused local variables included.
Python doesn't really have private members like C++ does, so a lack of accessor functions doesn't have the same meaning.
(I can't address the reflection thing; never really learned Java. My thinking went from C to Python... from what I saw, C++ was an incremental improvement (long story there...), Java was another, but Python was a leap from C, much the same way C was a leap from ASM.)
HTH,
Eli
Seems offensive to me. What if the article would be the other way around, would you say the same?
I don't know who the writer is but if his experience is that then he doesn't know that much programmers.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
The reasons I moved to Java are the very same reasons that Paul Graham describes as reasons that people use HIS favorite languages. I had had an early foray in Smalltalk, was heavily influenced by it and embraced Java as a chance to get away awful C++ (which I had studied heavily and worked with)..
I embraced Java because I could finally program the OO way in it. C++ was supposedly OO, but didn't work quite right, and Java was an ok (not perfect) mainstream Smalltalk based language. The original team was fairly strict in the sense that it would not allow brain damaged C++ programmers to ruin the language (there was definitely a "purist" language design philosophy involved). Of course, in recent years they seem to have dropped that (see Java 1.5 generics, etc..)
Now Python comes along... and Ruby too... they are nice, because among other things they bring us the Smalltalk philosophy of simplicity with Java lacked for marketing and acceptability reasons.
I say.. what about Smalltalk itself??
The reason I still stick with Java is:
- Huge huge number of libraries
- Good acceptability
- Easier to convince my boss
- etc..
Pragmatic reasons.. not purist ones.
I think a lot of Java programmers are the same.. Python is nice.. hope it catches on, but look we have this very mature platform in the meantime.
Now P. Graham arguing about Perl as a good design vs. Java is just laughable. Sure, Perl is fast, Perl has regular expressions. But Perl has NO orthogonality, Perl is a write only language... it is not a language for people who like to read code.
To me it just seems like Paul Graham is used to using Lisp, to running his code on Unix. Paul Graham probably runs emacs and has the Unix culture in him. He shouldn't confuse his Unix culture preference for scripting and languages similar to scripting, his preference for dynamic typing, his preference for the command line, his preference of being with a rebel as a real reason to bash the mainstream. It's just an illusive preference of his own.
It's laughable for a Perl or C++ programmer to diss a designed language and say theirs is superior.. the only reason we listen to Graham is because of his Lisp background.
Well, uh, generally I agree with that... but, earlier today there was a posting about why the number of female Comp Sci majors was dropping.
Hope they don't read Slashdot...
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
First off, let me be clear: I like Python. I think the throw-back to the yesteryear of line-oriented programming with enforced indentation style is quaint, bordering on painful and that the ultra-dynamic typing without dynamic conversion is kind of a strange choice, but I like Python, and I intend to use it quite a bit.
However, back in the "old days" (late 80s, early 90s), Perl too was a bastion of those who wanted to throw off the shackles of scripting (I hate when that word is mis-used to refer to interpreted languages). Perl was the way to start giving some real structure to all of those tasks like report printing and systems toolsmithing that had traditionally involved totally unmaintainable "scripts" which eventually had to be re-written in a low-level language.
So what happened? Nothing really. Perl developed some nice features, but ultimately LOTS of bad programmers learned it and in a language that makes it easy for people to write programs, you quickly develop a robust collection of REALLY bad code (along with the really good). Just look at C for confirmation of that.
Python is where Perl was in the early 90s now. Lots of folks who know bad code from good are using it, and it looks like the next great island to swim to. It's easy to look back at Perl and say "it was the dollar-signs that FORCED people to be bad coders," or to look at Java and say, "the low-level types are what SEDUCED people into writing crappy code."
In reality it was the popularity and subsequent influx of bad programmers. Python is becoming popular and I guarantee that in about 5 years Python programmers will be listening to, "[Span, Ruby, something else] is so much better than Python... just look at how much cleaner the code is."
I wonder if we'll ever figure out that joe blow who barely understands what programming is will always produce unmaintainable shlock, no matter what language he writes in and no matter what book on abstract modeling he's just read.