[Wolves] Sat^WSunday Fun

[Alex Willmer]

Hopefully this will spark off some fun discussion.

The game:
      * Name a program that by choice or fate, you rely on.
      * Describe 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 inconsistent (ie 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 Python, it gets so many things right, I expect I'll love 
Python 3 even more.

Now your turn. Spare no praise, pull no punches.

Alex

PS I don't mean this as a troll, just a conversation starter.