[Wolves] Fri^WSaturday Fun

[Alex Willmer]

I hope this will spark off some lighthearted discussion.

Name a program that by choice or fate, you rely on. List three aspects
of it that you like most and three that annoy you most. Finally give a
verdict - overall, do you love it or hate it.

For me: Python.

I love most:
     1. It's quirky, minimal, indentation=delimitation syntax. If it
        runs, it's probably readable & I can keep the whole language
        model in my head with room to spare.
     2. It's cross platform to the core. With little or no effort, I can
        write a clean script for Windows, *nix and (I presume) OSX
     3. Functionality per Line of Code. For gluing things together and
        mangling just about any data type , python's terseness with
        clarity continues to impress me. Generators and list
        comprehension, which allow looping without a loop, are just so
        powerful for their compactness.

I'm most annoyed by:
     1. Much of the standard library violates the principal of 'There
        should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.'
        Module naming is variable (is it foo, foolib, cFoo or foo.foo).
        Nearly every module litters the top level & there's no clear
        indication which modules are platform specific, other than
        consulting the manual. Some modules (eg [any|bsd|dumb|g]db[hash|
        m]) overlap others.
     2. The DB-API is spartan in the extreme. It doesn't introspect
        tables or column names and extra modules are required for
        connecting to anything but sqlite.
     3. I've not yet found a Python IDE that beats Visual Studio for
        VB6. None that I've tried could offer the level of
        autocompletion I grew accustomed to.

Verdict: I love it. I expect I'll love Python 3 even more.

Now you're turn. Spare no praise, pull no punches.

Alex

PS To fellow PyWM members. Would it come across as too trollish to post
this to the PyWM list also?