[oclug] Python, was: Evolution problem

[Dave O'Neill]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 10:19:22PM -0400, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> I have my issues with it, but it's far from a religous thing for me.
> Perl is simply not the right tool for the job all the time. Neither is
> Python. 

I seem to have a bit of a reputation as a Perl bigot around here for
some reason.  Let it be known that I hate all software equally. =)

> I'll probably regret this, but I'm curious to know what you don't like
> about it. 

It's a schizophrenic language.  Parts of the standard Python library are
kinda-sorta UNIX-like, and others aren't.  For example, it's annoying
when calling close() on a popen()'ed file object returns the exit status
of the process EXCEPT when it succeeded, when it returns None instead.
Or that some standard library calls throw Python exceptions, making a
stat() test for a nonexistant file into an ugly exception case.
There's also the tortured list-manipulation syntax -- why have a pop()
but no push(), for example. 

Perhaps it's just that I'm currently writing code in too many C-like
programming languages to appreciate the wonders of Python, but when I
write Python code it seems like a lot of things were done they way they
were just for the sake of being different, not because it was better.

Dave