This looks like shaping up to be a great interview. As a fan of Python it's great to see so many "big names" getting on board.

Just a quick query for any Python experts reading this:

for line in open('filename').readlines():

Does the above line close the file automatically or does it leave it hanging open? Since the result of the open() call isn't assigned to a variable I imagine it gets garbage collected and when it does the file gets closed, but is this instant or does the file stay open for a while? If the latter is true, it's probably best to replace the one liner with this:

f = open('filename')
lines = f.readlines()
f.close()
for line in lines:
...

This is what I normally use, but if the one liner does work without leaving open file handles hanging around I'll start using that instead.

I strongly agree with the observation about how to open a file as an example of clutter that Python avoids very successfully. I recently ported a Java utility to Python and took 8 classes and a couple of interfaces and boiled it down to less than 100 lines of very readable Python. One feature of the standard Python library that I relied on is the os.path.walk method. Why I ask myself, hasn't such a common routine been made a standard part of the Java API?

Python is amazing in how it helps me to be productive and I am also thrilled to hear well regarded folks like Bill and Bruce agree and are providing the forum for publicizing Python's capabilities.

> "I can't remember how to open files in Java."
> "Oh, I see. They're putting their curly braces here or there."

Wonderful! I thought these sorts of problems were just me being stupid. I'm glad to see gurus are human, too.

Vince.

And if you want to see the original keynote presentation then go to:

http://www.python9.org/p9-keynotes.html

(PS: Can someone add this link to article references too?)

My problem with Python is that I can't remember what the names mean. I see lots of names but I don't see what kind of things they denote.

def sellHouse(buyer, seller, contract):...

Is buyer the id of a person, the name of a person, a person object, which subclass in my person hierarchy? Sure I could encode the types of everything in the names. But what if I change the type? Then I'd have to change all the names.

To find out what all the names mean I have to go read the documentation. I'm just too lazy for that, so I'll stay with Java for the time being.

-Alexander

Interesting article!
A lot of hard-core Java folks are trying Ruby and Python
lately with various level of excitement.

My view is somewhat conservative, though. I think a great "development platform" is made of 4 equally important ingredients:

1. Language (keywords, types, static<->dynamic checks, OOP features, etc. )

2. Powerful and rich API (sockets, IO, regex, RPC, XML, Graphics, Transactions, HTTP, RDBMS interface, etc ...)

3. IDE (Refactoring, Search, Debugging) support

4. Performance and built-in security

That is why I am always amazed when someone is only focused on Item 1. Sure, Scheme is great, but how many enterprise projects it delivered? I wish reading lines from files serves as a benchmark for language merits, but things are a lot more complicated in the real software projects...


I would like to take defense on the Java side now:

1. The language itself is getting more and more pleasant to work with, especially with assertions, all of the JSR014 and JSR201 features. It really does lead to more compact code! I already prototype some stuff with generics and I am very happy with the code-reduction/expressiveness of the design!

2. I disagree with the idea of relieving the compiler from doing pedantic static check of the code and putting the burden on the developer to write (let's say) unit tests.
I love unit tests/XP, but I will sleep better when I know that javac has caugth all other things I did not envision in the unit tests;-)

3. An enormous advance was made by some Java IDE tools (such as Eclipse, CodeGuide and IDEA). This really changes the economics and relative price of Java code. The idea that writing Java code is expensive and should only be reserved for serious stuff, while configurations and test should be written in toy languages/XML, IMHO, is not valid any longer. It is all due to the advance of the Java IDEs!
Instead, I just "tag" some piece of Java code as "cheap-to-refactor" and some other as "core-and-well-thought-of".



4. On the issue of checked exceptions. I will only present a couple of two real examples, you judge:
a/ A friend of mine works in a ISP company (San Diego, A+net). Some while ago (around 2001-2), they upgraded to the latest MSSQL server. To their surprise, the new server was incompatible with their server side COM objects. After enormous debugging effort, it turned out to be an uncaught C++ exceptions, killing the whole db server! Sure, they filed bug report with Microsoft, prayed 2-3 weeks for the patch, LOST THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ... plus all the frustration.
b/ Look at the web page of James Gosling (java.sun.com/people/jag/). There, he points to a investigation report for the reason behind the Ariana 5 crash. Guess what - uncaught exception!
You calculate the money involved.

5. Performance is an issue for way to many real applications! Please hear me! If a language makes Floats first class object sacrificing performace, then no, I won't implement my 3D rendering toolkit in it! Sorry!

Hristo

I like hristo's points.

In particular, IntelliJ's IDEA is as close to the ideal IDE as possible, with advanced search, intellisense editing and extensive refactorings. These make Java a pleasure to program. And IDEA works for VERY large projects (as long as you have decent RAM). It also does remote debugging of J2EE code with finesse.

I will add another: UML tools. Borland's TogetherSoft makes it easy to reverse engineer huge Java projects. See http://opensource.objectsbydesign.com for some examples. UML for Python seriously lags. See http://objectsbydesign.com/projects/python_uml.html for more information.

While there has been progress in Python tools, it has been very slow.

The other point hristo made about having a rich API:
When Java added regex support, this seriously leveled the playing field with perl and python, which are frequently used for this feature.

I've got to agree with Bruce about the usefulness of enforced indentation rules. The indentation is required by Python, so everyone follows the same rule.

The Java/C++/C alternatives means that there are at least 4 ways to indent code(one of them being don't follow any stinkin' rule).

So if I'm working in a team and there are no standards for indentation everytime I look at someone's code where they follow a different standard I waste time thinking about the structure of what I'm trying to read.

Sometimes I (and my colleagues) waste a lot of time. So why not require certain indentation rules for Java/C++/C, etc. [I can hear the howling in the distance].

For a much longer discussion on time wasting while thinking see the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug who runs a site at http://www.sensible.com/.

Well, let's talk about Python and making life easier for the programming - no bullshit reasons for not accomplishing this objective.

1. How about a switch statement? Why not? It would make many lives easier in comparison to the resort commonly recommended to fix you the programmer here, and not the language - the if/elif garbage. But has this every been done, this one simple thing that for all we've ever been told by the purportedly beatific designers is _only_ a convenience and therefore never going to be a part of the language? Come on!

2. One thing that makes my life as a programmer easier is if I can write a program in a specific language, learn all of its idiosyncrasies and develop applications written in that language. With python I am faced with the questions of:
- do I write this in the version of python that is on most people's machines, is what most of the extant books contain examples for and isn't so slow people will not want to run my program at all (1.5x)
- do I write this in the version of python that adds more obtuseness yet addresses bitrot and adds in some classes that are handy, one I can run Zope on, where Guido works, for example - well this would be 2.1.this, or is it 2.1.that? And what is the difference in the versions again? Tell me this was for my convenience as a programmer - bullshit alarm going off with klaxon tone.
- how about I write my code on the recommended, modern, version of python. Still has no case construct, even though for all the OO hoity toity poobah about python 90% (oh yeah, take a look!) of every python program I've ever seen are "procedures", but we do manage to make it yet slower than ever. And Zope won't run right with it. And besides Zope, for all of Bruce Eckel's praise and vaporous talent, along with the python luminaries (you-know-who-you-are-ly-yours) so holy that they can't be bothered to take a break from this nonsense for the mere sake of programmer satisfaction with the language when they ask for some simple constructs, a real Internet class library (hey, if were gonna bash PHP let's back it up), and SPEED GODDAMIT. This would be versoin 2.2.. no wait: 2.2.3 Final (released May 30), or wait: 2.3b1 (release April 25th!) - you know it and I know it the only people who are going to write books^H^H^H^H^H programs in this because it's easier is Guid, I mean Tim, ... wait, no one.

--

I want to love python. I really do, but python has a huge glaring faint-hued elephant-sized problem - it doesn't know what it is anymore. If it was convenience for the programmer it isn't anymore, but does Bruce criticize this - no, only praise. Reality check o important ones - this is the disease in action, you just heard the warts being removed because someone with a big mouth but no working neato product said they were removed.

Say it's quick to write programs in? Sure, if you don't bother to read all of the pendantic PEPs, don't care if it will run on any machine that has python installed (they better have 3 versions and we all know it), and you aren't going to write anything big. Many people say that perl isn't good for big projects, Java or maybe python is much better - if that were true I think we'd see alot more big projects written in python than there are in perl, or PHP, or Tcl.. but for all of the inbread blind hype o c.l.py we don't really see any code out there. Show me one single good python based webmail system... or even a decent modern shopping cart, please!

What we have: Lots of basic editors posing as IDE's behind a mask of bloat; only one decent application server that has recently been infected by the "let's change stuff for our own reasons, make things harder (page templates are hard folks, dtml was easier... wasn't that what you were supposed to... oh yeah), and go in 3 or more directions at once behind closed doors and not really produce anything" disease. Maybe it's the new old blood. The few products that do exist that are even half way decent are bound by the most personal and disengenuous licenses any "free software" afficianado has ever seen - and there are a ton of them - these things are _only_ free as in beer. Unless you want the pro version... otherwise you fellas stick to your free classes you get with the language and that big ass application server that breaks down with 5 concurrent requests per second.

Look at Zope and python a few years ago - ahead of its time, small, a toolbox you could work with. You could make the case then that there were features about that language that made it great, one of them being that it was easy (a joy even) to write programs in. Now they are both giant frameworks that the programmer has to bow down to and form themselves to their lofty limits and their narrow exclusions. Tell yourself that it's for your own OO goodness, tell yourself that speed doesn't matter, or backwards compatibility, persisting in a single direction at a time, or that maybe people really believe and respect you when you (at your job that uses some other language) boast casually about the "cleanliness" of python... but that isn't actually make it be any of the good things you say.

Please, DO NOT write an article telling us that what python is right now is a language developed with an eye towards you, the programmer at large and your convenience. Bullshit. And if you do believe that I have some evidence of WMD in Iraq that would justify a war there on its own merit.

puhleeeze... windbags, it's time you stopped with the snippets unless you are talking about putting the language on a diet and speak your proof of authority on this subject with code. And I mean a whole working program... let's see python use patterns and easily generate that large-scale program other languages aren't suited for; do it quickly because you can right? And make it an application like PHPNuke, Scoop or any of the many other very popular and _easy_ to write Internet programs not written in python.

Thanks, we'd all appreciate that and then we promise to take you seriously again and write lots more litle and big programs compared to PHP or perl. Otherwise stop leading around the noobs so that you can pander your product to the paying customers while leaving the others to wonder just how your product works for themselves.

I plead with you influential people that promote python on the basis of programing skill, "craft", that if you can you should salvage this language and give it back the virtues you sing about. Take of the pointy hat and the mantle of "I'll tell you whats good for you" or yet more people like myself will jump ship (to what? alas... we need a new language) and acknowledge the fact that the last thing that python is today is a language focused on You, the ordinary programmer.

It is focused on its luminaries, the light is so bright they won't see the end of their language until the one day it becomes so slow that it actually stops. Of course the academic will have no reason not to continue at that point... remember your roots, and the People's Front of Judea debating on how to save the life of Brian, or leave the rest of us out of our plans altogether.

> Bruce Eckel says: When you have the experience of really
> being able to be as productive as possible, then you start
> to get pissed off at other languages. You think, "Gee,
> I've been wasting my time with these other languages."
>
> Read this Artima.com interview with Bruce Eckel:
>
> http://www.artima.com/intv/aboutme.html
>
> What do you think of Bruce's comments?


I laughed out loud at this particular quote in the article. I use Perl at work (they won't install Python for us) and I am constantly frustrated by it. Even C++ is a whip after working in Python. Using Python is like a breath of fresh air.

Comparing Java and Python is unfair. Why?

Java is more cluttered because it is a statically typed language which by definition has more declarations and fluff than a dynamically typed language. Just like Pascal was considered "wordy" by BASIC programmers (not that Python is like BASIC.. don't get me wrong).

I think Python is great. But when I see Python and Ruby and Groovy I begin to think: "hmmm.. wouldn't it be just a bit better if it were more like Smalltalk".

In the end I've concluded that Smalltalk is the coolest OO language EVER. Everything is cluttered and clunky next to it (I wish I were kidding!). It's only sin was appearing 15 or 20 years too soon.

Python is decidedly cluttered next to Smalltalk, and since it fully takes advantage of it's dynamism you don't need Generics or Interfaces or other such complexities. And it has a VM, garbage collection, and all the other things Java, Python, C# and others have..

Why don't we modernize Smalltalk a bit (a la IBM Smalltalk) and create an open source version of that! (I find Squeak a bit too .. 1980 for my taste)