Friday, April 16, 2004
Re-Learning Python
A review of the new features added to python since the once hallowed 1.5.2 version -- iterators, generators, new object model, metaclasses etc. A very rapid run through the features I think suffered slightly from the sheer amount of material (the talk compressed a normal 2 day content into about an hour).
My general impression of Python with these new changes is that it's getting quite bloated with niche capabilities that most people will never -- or rather should never -- use. It's turning into C++ without pointers imho. Fortunately most features are tucked away, and the simple syntax (the main selling point other than the VB style libraries). I get the impression, somewhat dejectedly that most people are actually only writing glue code with python and not large systems (see later session entry on this topic).
Several features are similar to what C# is doing -- properties, iterators and generators which allow a simple iterator syntax using a continuation-like support (yield keyword). I think Delphi may have had many of these for sometime.
A review of the new features added to python since the once hallowed 1.5.2 version -- iterators, generators, new object model, metaclasses etc. A very rapid run through the features I think suffered slightly from the sheer amount of material (the talk compressed a normal 2 day content into about an hour).
My general impression of Python with these new changes is that it's getting quite bloated with niche capabilities that most people will never -- or rather should never -- use. It's turning into C++ without pointers imho. Fortunately most features are tucked away, and the simple syntax (the main selling point other than the VB style libraries). I get the impression, somewhat dejectedly that most people are actually only writing glue code with python and not large systems (see later session entry on this topic).
Several features are similar to what C# is doing -- properties, iterators and generators which allow a simple iterator syntax using a continuation-like support (yield keyword). I think Delphi may have had many of these for sometime.
