Requests For Features

[C E Macfarlane]

> >	Wouldn't it be easier just to use the --prefix option in GiP?

>	You elided the part where I said I also moved the subtitles into a
different folder than the program.

Well, you could still use the --prefix option to get the name right from the
word go, but each to his own ...

See below for further OT discussion, otherwise feel free to ignore ...

www.macfh.co.uk/CEMH.html

> > >	Python, by stark contrast [to Perl], is extremely clean and readable
due to its use of semantically meaningful indentations.

> >	It has some major problems ...
> >
> > 	The first you have mentioned as an asset, but said semantically
meaningful
indentation has some disadvantages too  -  it is, AFAIAA, unique, and thus
confuses programmers coming from other languages, and it is possible to be
confused by spaces where the rest of the program has been written with tabs,
and vice versa, and such problems can be non-obvious to spot, and further it
is impossible to crunch, though I admit this latter problem can largely be
offset by pre-compilation.

>	The benefits far outweigh the (very slight) initial learning curve for
people knowledgeable in other languages, and for beginners the more readable
code they immediately produce helps enormously.  I've taught introductory
programming in C and Python and observed the benefits first hand.

But that's not saying much, since C is hardly an "Introductory Programming
Language", so you're comparing apples with pears.  In the long-ago original
discussion, I don't recall anyone even suggesting that C/C++ was an
introductory language, let alone put it above Python for this purpose.
IIRC, the comparisons were between BASIC, Pascal, PERL, and Python.

> >	Secondly, particularly to anyone used to more mainstream OOP languages
such
as C++ or Java, its object-oriented syntax is just horrible.  I have to look
it up anew every time I want to create an object.

>	Sorry, but that's just you.  It's trivially simple, IMO.  But we all,
myself included, tend to suffer from "baby duck syndrome", and like what we
learned first, or at least early on.

What I learned first was BASIC, Assembler, Pascal, COBOL, and 123 macros,
coming to C/C++ and Java comparatively late in life, so your, even though
you have applied them equally to yourself, patronising and condescending
baby-duck assumption just doesn't fit.  You'd do better to answer the
criticisms raised, rather than make incorrect assumptions which just make it
appear as though you haven't got a valid argument in reply.

> >	Thirdly, again particularly to anyone used to C or Java, its syntax for
conditional assignment is uniquely weird, and always I have to check that
I've remembered it aright.

>	Ditto.

Ditto.

> >	Fourthly, there is the confusion between when to use arrays, and when to
use
sequences, the confusion of syntax differences between the two, and the
syntax to create arrays is uniquely obscure, to say the least.

>	Ditto.

Ditto.

> >	Fifthly, its documentation is poor, finding help on any of the above
points
may take some time.

>	Now that's just silly.  We all have our preferences, and that's fine and
good, but saying the documentation for Python is poor is flat out wrong.

The help file installed alongside Python in Windows, which is all that
you've got to go on if you're offline,  is piss-poor.  Searches never find
the sort of information that you're trying to look up straight off, usually
you have to wade through many irrelevancies to find anything useful at all.

>	Between python.org/docs, stackoverflow.com, and simple Google searches it
is trivially simple to find answers to pretty much anything you could ever
want to know about Python.

But the last two of those are extra-Python sources, so the fact that you
suggest that they are useful strengthens my point, not yours.

> >	I dare say I could find more, but that'll do for an OT post for now ...

>	Well, different strokes for different folks.  Of course you should use
what you like and are comfortable with.  But please don't proclaim your
personal preferences as some kind of inherent, basic truth.

I've supported that truth by giving actual examples, which you chose to
waive away and ignore.

>	Python is now the most commonly used introductory programming language at
US universities [1]

So in previous eras was BASIC!  Taken together, I don't think either fact
proves very much!