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“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

(mail.python.org)
2024 points randlet | 3 comments | 12 Jul 18 15:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.41s | source
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krylon ◴[12 Jul 18 16:35 UTC] No.17516259[source]▶
I haven't used Python in many years, but it was the first programming language I really could say I loved. Everything was was either completely in tune with my intuition or well-documented.

I had a lot of fun with Python, and I learned a lot about programming by (ab)using it. I am very grateful to Guido van Rossum and the work he has done, and I wish him all the best for his future.

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jessaustin ◴[12 Jul 18 17:59 UTC] No.17517063[source]▶
I totally agree with this. In 1999 I had only used C and shell (well lisp a little bit in college), and python was such a breath of fresh air...
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Keyframe ◴[12 Jul 18 19:37 UTC] No.17517922[source]▶
Even though I am hardwired to C and 'thinking like a machine would/prefers', python was probably the first and only language I didn't feel like it was a programming language at all. Always when I write something in it, it's always 'huh, and that's it? I'm... done?'. Sure, it's equal part due to language and 'batteries', but neither would happen without GvR and awesome community that built around his project and him. Python, to me, is like lisp without parens and with libraries - the future we were promised. Only thing I, personally, can't do is write large(er/ish) codebases with it. I tend to get lost, but that's probably due to my C-like brain. In any case, thanks for everything!
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nikofeyn ◴[12 Jul 18 21:55 UTC] No.17518946[source]▶
how is python like lisp?
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1. wrmsr ◴[12 Jul 18 23:40 UTC] No.17519518[source]▶
It's lisp without the curse. You have an arbitrarily dynamic runtime but enough structure and cultural idiom against abusing it that it has flourished. Compare for example type annotations in python versus those in clojure - clojure's expressivity and the culture's tendency to use it pervasively make meaningful annotations much more difficult than in python, even with python's crazy calling convention. Additionally a lot of my data processing python code winds up feeling very lispy - arbitrarily deeply nested iterator pipelines transforming dumb and often immutable data. We largely do this in python because smart objects are slow not out of any pursuit of purity, we have a thriving ecosystem of these kinds of libraries, but the end result feels vaguely similar either way.
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2. armitron ◴[16 Jul 18 08:13 UTC] No.17539569[source]▶
Python is nothing like Lisp, please stop with the generalizations. When it comes to stupid comparisons, Ruby is more Lisp than Python, at least it's got Symbols.

Python is not homoiconic, it doesn't have {reader/compiler/normal}macros, it doesn't have symbols, it doesn't have proper lexical scope, it doesn't have dynamic scope, it doesn't have conditions and restarts, not every statement is an expression, it's full of special cases and is monstrously complicated if you look beneath the surface [thus all the hacks in PEP form].

How is it Lisp when it doesn't have the special magic that makes Lisp so powerful?

3. lispm ◴[16 Jul 18 09:36 UTC] No.17539884[source]▶
Python is an object-oriented BASIC.