Re: gdb scripting language (was OSX crash)

[Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@googlemail.com>]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
> 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.

I can decrypt enough Python to understand if there's a problem,
but ignore it as step back for expressing execution recipes for
machines. We've had better for far longer. Humanity seems to want
to feel pain. The rise of C like languages in the 80s started a dark
phase and sadly stopped hopeful approaches even within IBM related
to Fortran, however odd that may sound.

I'm not a Lisp fanboy or believer, just stating that whoever
used a Lisp machine or similar in functionality and work flow
in the way you write and massage or run code (images) is
forever sad given popular languages.

People seem to care about solutions and products more than
technologies, so we have to hide the good stuff as a trojan horse
inside something fancy.

If a superior package manager was written in Forth and provided
enough benefit, it would inevitably give Forth credit and mindshare.

> 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.

I'm glad I never learned enough to Perl to be dangerous, also
I just ignore Python as it doesn't fit my taste. Still Python looks
and feels cleaner than Ruby, which is like one of the frankenstein
languages people have to use (yes C# is also like that).
You cannot tack on things on a language like "modding" cars.
At least you shouldn't if you respect your users.

>  > 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

Don't, view this instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVaNAm8jR_U
It's buried somewhere at last 3rd IIRC.

> far more resistance from the average member of the free software
> community and the broader (or if you prefer, "neighboring") open
> source community.

Interesting, I never felt that Lisp has a hard time in the free software
community. My views may miss some spectrum you're referring to.

> 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.

Maybe, but I'm a believer in a project's popular functionality dictating
use of some of its "controversial" choices. Nobody would use Objective-C
as much if it wasn't for Cocoa (Touch) and Apple's stringent rules.
Exceptions like using Mono, GHC arm or some Scheme variant are
excluded as exceptions.

I don't want to continue this discussion as it's way off topic and rather
talked about at a table or around a camp fire.