Re: [tlug] nessie - the loch ness monster of programming languages

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Martin" == Martin Bähr <mbaehr@example.com> writes:

    Martin> the point i wanted to make is, that nessie has now, what
    Martin> python may have sometime in the future (or never), so if
    Martin> you are impatient, then why not try nessie?

Of course!  That's very reasonable, but there's a lot more to "being
Pythonic" than just indentation.  Of the people I've met on the net
(which is a very small fraction of all those on the net and doesn't
include anybody involved with Pike or Nessie), I'd have to rank at
least four Python contributors (GvR, "Uncle" Tim Peters, Andrew "yes,
Uva, _that_ AK" Koenig, and Fred <I don't feel like looking up last
name>) in the top ten designers I know.

As of v2.4, Python has something called "decorators" which are often
used to implement something much like static typing.  They are both
more general (can be used for many purposes unrelated to type-
checking, eg, C++-like templating) and less general (since they may
only be applied to functions, they're only useful for typing arguments
and return values) than declarations.  And the extra generality makes
them somewhat harder and more verbose to use, although the idioms are
quite natural.

    Martin> do you have a pointer to docs that explain how common
    Martin> lisps typing works?

Not specifically, although there will be terse references in the
HyperSpec <URL:http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Front/>
and Paul Graham is a good read <URL:http://www.paulgraham.com/>, and
I'm sure he discusses declarations somewhere in there, but I don't
know where.  :-)



-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.