On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 9:29 PM, Jack Woehr
<jwoehr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If you have to compile it yourself, that already puts it below Python
Those of us who come from the open source community view such statements as
heresy :)
Hey, I come from the open source community. Maybe a less
testosterone-laden wing of that community, but definitely under the
umbrella.
You used to have to compile Python yourself!
Well, yeah, and you used to have to write thousands of lines of
assembly to implement your own sort routine, if you wanted sorting
done in a reasonable amount of time, using the minimum amount of
memory.
That someone else did it for you and put it in a package is like having an
automatic transmission vs. a stick shift (the latter sometimes called a
"milennial anti-theft device" :)
And I drive a stick-shift. It's fun. But automatics are so good these
days, stick-shifts can't even claim better performance or fuel
economy. (Especially if you are putting three-pedal-and-stick setups
against the modern sport transmissions that are mechanically "manual"
but the computer controls the clutch and performs the gear shift.)
Same thing happened with coding. In extreme, extreme, extreme cases, a
human programmer can hand-tune assembly to outperform optimizing
higher-level compilers. But not every programmer can, and even for the
ones who can, it's debatable whether it's worth their time and effort.
I don't mean to be a wet blanket on old-school coding jocks. I counted
myself as one, once. And there is a certain amount of fun to writing
assembly code yourself. But open source is flourishing right now
precisely because automatics are so good. Back when I was in school,
languages like Lisp and Python were conceptually beautiful, but
unusable from a practical point of view, because they were just way,
way too slow. And often buggy. Automated garbage collection was simply
a nonstarter back then. Wasn't gonna happen. Today, managing your own
memory is almost quaint.
(What's kind of amazing, scary, and exciting is that we're on the
verge of having consumer-grade cars that drive themselves.)
would find Python more intuitive than Rexx anyway.
Well, yes, but I thunk you wuz all IBM nerdz :)
I don't even understand what you're trying to say here. What are the
salient traits of "IBM nerdz"? And are you saying IBM nerds would find
Rexx more intuitive, or Python?
John Y.
midrange.com
