OT: Website CMS

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 02:39:18PM -0400, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> If you're ignorant about Python, on what basis did you decide that you
> don't like it? If you say "enforced whitespace", I'll be sure to bring
> tar and feathers to the next TLUG meeting in which you're in attendance. :)

Python is certainly a nice language to work with (in most cases) and
has some lovely extensions available for it (I love pygame).

Unfortunately python is also an evolving language and is perfectly
willing to destroy backwards compatibility while evolving.  My wife ran
into the disaster that is python3 a few days ago trying to figure out why
print statements weren't working on one of the UofT lab machines and why
the numpy extension was completely broken.  Well someone had installed
python 3.0 as the default python on the machine and print statements are
no more (replaced by print() functions) and numpy hasn't even started
to get ported to python3.  So when you use python, beware of upgrades.

Not that it is any worse than what STL and namespaces did to C++
compatiblity, or what some perl upgrades have done (well python3 probably
is worse than any single perl upgrade ever has been so far).

> I considered Ruby when I was considering various Python-based frameworks
> a few years ago. I opted to stick with Python for a few reasons.
> 
> 1. Python was/is more mature. It's seen as a fringe language by some so
> if Python is on the fringe, Ruby is even more so. I didn't want to be
> that far on the fringe.

Seeing the changelist for python3 I no longer think of python as mature.

> 2. Python had better Unicode support at the time. Ruby had no Unicode
> support to speak of.

It does do that rather well.

> 3. The English Ruby docs weren't as extensive or as good as the Python
> docs I found. I suppose if I could read Japanese, that might have helped.
> 
> 4. I found Ruby's syntax to be a mishmash of Python and Perl, with the
> worst parts of both.

That sounds painful (I have never cared to look at ruby, so I can't
really comment on that).

> Having said all that, had I not started using Python first, I may have
> been happy with Ruby.
> 
> Since you already know how to program, I don't see how this is such a
> big commitment. Asking others for their opinions on this is like asking,
> "What kind of tea do you like? I'd like to try your favourite kind."
> Actually, I have a story on that. A few years ago, I bought some tea
> that I loved from Nasr Fine Foods, which has, sadly, been going downhill
> for a while. I never saw it there again. A few months ago, I saw the
> same tea at Arz Bakery, which is attracting disaffected Nasr shoppers,
> but it was the same story when I returned to buy some more. I asked the
> manager if he could order more and he told me that he couldn't but
> recommended some Lebanese brand, Horse's Head Tea, a name evocative of
> the infamous scene in The Godfather. He told me it was a very
> high-quality tea and that it was very good. It might have been a
> high-quality tea but I thought it tasted awful. Clearly, some things are
> an acquired taste.

Yeah learning a language is generally no big deal if you actually know
how to program.  A programming language is just a tool.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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