From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: gdb scripting language (was OSX crash) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:04:18 +0900 Message-ID: <87ty4wk90t.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1324299873 7135 80.91.229.12 (19 Dec 2011 13:04:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:04:33 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Emacs developers To: Carsten Mattner Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 19 14:04:29 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RcctI-0003YM-IX for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:04:28 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34744 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RcctI-0007CI-5A for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:04:28 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:34964) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RcctF-0007CD-Ua for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:04:26 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RcctB-0004rv-KR for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:04:25 -0500 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:43251) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RcctB-0004ri-6e for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:04:21 -0500 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 12FC197079B; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:04:19 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 0D5B81A2769; Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:04:19 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM 8.2.0a1 under 21.5 (beta31) "ginger" 2dbefd79b3d3 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:146822 Archived-At: Carsten Mattner writes: > [Python is] only made popular due to being the new Perl of the > Linux distros. I'm not sure exactly what your sentence referred to, but if the edit above it correctly reflects your intent, your statement is false. There are excellent reasons why Python is the scripting language chosen by most distros that have made such a choice recently. Those reasons don't necessarily apply to an extension language, of course, and we should be careful about that distinction. However, I do find some of the features of Python such as iterators, comprehensions, and occasionally even generators to be useful at the interpreter prompt, so I suspect they would be similarly useful if Python were used as an extension language. Of course the other scripting languages you mention are of similar power, but I don't find them any easier to learn than I found Python (and I've learned several languages since I learned Python; I should be better at it now!) There's an advantage to having one language popular enough that you only need to learn that one, which gives Python a substantial edge on the others (except Perl, of course). It's also true that I find them all harder to learn than I found forgetting Perl, but that, of course, is praising with faint damns. > Python being in lldb is one of problems FreeBSD faces with putting > LLDB in the base system. If you say so, I'll take your word for it. Nevertheless, Lisps face far more resistance from the average member of the free software community and the broader (or if you prefer, "neighboring") open source community. This *is* a problem for Emacs, and I think Lispers (and advocates of functional languages in general) could learn a lot from the success of Python.