Today I managed to finally find a way to express what I’ve been thinking for a while: “Python is the new BASIC”. Think about it: it’s easy to get started in, there’s books and tutorials on it everywhere, a bunch of real world software is actually written in it and with all the different versions and modules (and versions of modules) there’s a billion subtle differences to trip you up.
There’s also the group of people (like me) who don’t particularly like it, for a bunch of quite valid reasons. The lack of being strongly typed is a huge barrier for me.
I am of the opinion that the ideal language with the ideal compiler would not let buggy code compile. It may not be as easy to program in this hypothetical language, but seeing as code has to exist and be debugged for order of magnitudes more time than it takes to write it, making it harder to write bugs is a good thing. After all, my experience with Python apps is that bugs manifest themselves at run time, to the user, rather than to the developer at the time of writing. Also, compiler error is better than unit test failure.
Discuss.
@stewartsmith Related: I wonder what C++11’s “auto” keyword will do to its “strong typing” reputation?
@stewartsmith sounds like you need to learn Haskell…
Over here Python is becoming part of the IT curriculum in schools, just as BBC Basic was when I was a kid.
For educational purposes I do like the fact that Python requires you to indent correctly helps teach people to write more readable code.
Nope. Python is NOT and never will be, the new BASIC. Only BASIC can be BASIC.