A ProgrammingLanguage possibly best described as "the other scripting language". It forces cleaner style than its begrudged older brother Perl allows as the lowest common denominator.
This is a good language to learn if you only program occasionally out of necessity. (E.g. if you are a WebMonkey who needs do odd things with text, XML and structured data every now and then.) Those who like it find Python code unusually easy to read, which is good if you are returning to a script you wrote 3 months ago; and it has a very complete standard library, so you don't have to start from scratch when working on common tasks.
It is rather unusual in that indentation (leading whitespace on a line) is the only means of syntactical scoping. Not everyone appreciates this dictatorship, though it does force people to do what many seem not to have the discipline for in Perl.
Python's syntax succeeds in combining the mistakes of Lisp and Fortran. I do not contrue that as progress.
--LarryWall in20040512161005.GB3902@wall.org (also, see
See also:
The import script for the wiki was written in Python, have a look at my appauling code.
Note also his "appauling" spelling! ;) -- GreigMcGill
Dammit, Greig! I'm a programming, not a dictionary --
PerryLorier
Was that irony? ;) -- GreigMcGill
CategoryProgrammingLanguages, CategoryVeryHighLevelProgrammingLanguages
44 pages link to Python:
