Python compared to other language

[=?ISO-8859-15?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

PHP was definitely born _for_ webpages; Ruby wasn't, just like Perl or

Python weren't, it just became very popular for webpages when Rails
appeared.

In this kind of discussion, I get always reminded that Perl stands
for "Practical Extraction and Report Language". So Perl _clearly_
is for generating reports

FWIW, I think the main purpose of Python is to do testing on distributed
operating systems

Regards,
Martin

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

walterbyrd a écrit :

I don't know much about Ruby, but it does not seem to be commonly used
for anything other than web-development. It may be that Ruby could be
used for other purposes, but I don't seem to see it happen much.

Ruby is probably far better than Python at sys-admin tasks. And, while
recently made much more visible because of the hype around Rails, it's
definitively not specialized in web development.

I know that PHP can used at the command line, and could be used for
the same sort of sys-admin tasks for which, Perl and Python are often
used, but I don't seem to see that happening either.

I'm not sure if Ruby, or PHP, are as general purpose as Perl or Python.

Perl is not what I'd call a "general purpose" language. It has been
explicitly designed as a sys-admin tool. PHP is of course not a general
purpose language - the only serious reason to use PHP is that it's
widely available on cheap web-hosting. Python and Ruby are general
purpose languages - they have been designed to help writing
applications, whatever the domain and the UI.

 

[Cameron Laird]

.
.
.

Ruby is probably far better than Python at sys-admin tasks. And, while

.
.
.
You've got me curious, Bruno; what do you see about Ruby that makes it so?

 

[user2048]

Python is a strongly typed but dynamic language ...

In the "A few questions" thread, John Nagle's summary of Python begins
"Python is a byte-code interpreted untyped procedural dynamic
language with implicit declaration. "

Is Python strongly typed or untyped?

 

[Mark Morss]

On May 20, 5:02 pm, Bruno Desthuilliers

Ruby is probably far better than Python at sys-admin tasks.

Why, pray tell? I don't know much about Ruby, but I know that Python
is the language that Gentoo uses for package management, which
certainly qualifies as a sys-admin task.

 

[Neil Cerutti]

In the "A few questions" thread, John Nagle's summary of Python
begins "Python is a byte-code interpreted untyped procedural
dynamic language with implicit declaration. "

Is Python strongly typed or untyped?

It's strongly typed (only a handful of type conversions are
automatic), and dynamically typed (no type declarations for
identifiers are needed, types are checked at run time, not
compile time).

 

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

In <[email protected]>,

In the "A few questions" thread, John Nagle's summary of Python begins
"Python is a byte-code interpreted untyped procedural dynamic
language with implicit declaration. "

Is Python strongly typed or untyped?

Strongly typed.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

 

[Michael L Torrie]

In <[email protected]>,


Strongly typed.

Most people think of statically typed, like Java, when they think of
"Strongly typed."

Python is strongly, dynamically typed. Some people refer to Python as
"duck typed" meaning that python cares more about what the object
appears to be, rather than it's actual type. If it looks like a duck,
quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. Thus python is more concerned
with the protocol of an object than the actual type. This is a powerful
concept. I've also found, though, that duck-typing can be a real
weakness when you're working with a complicated third-party library with
weak documentation. You can't always infer what the method call is
expecting, even if you have the source code in front of you. Figuring
out the python twisted I/O library, is fraught with such challenges,
despite the documentation.