GNOME Platform Stormclouds

GNOME Platform Stormclouds

Posted Mar 26, 2004 18:08 UTC (Fri) by maney (subscriber, #12630)
In reply to: GNOME Platform Stormclouds by tjc
Parent article: GNOME Platform Stormclouds

All three lack static type checking, which is the *only* thing I was comparing with C.

Right, and that's why it's a useless comparison. There's a great deal more that differs among the four languages, and assuming that your experience with PHP and TCL are reliable guides to what Python is like is a bad assumption. I haven't used TCL, but I have worked with PHP at some length - indeed, I worked with it until it seemed to be unable to support the application, which was why I switched to Python. Nor was that the biased reaction of a fan of X who proves that Y isn't much good and finds reverting to X clearly better, as I had had nothing but superficial exposure to either language before beginning. And so I made the mistake of taking at face value all the hype that was going around then (still is, I guess) about how PHP is such a wonderful language for web apps with database backends. Maybe for Joe Hacker's Own CD Catalog it actually is; for the middling complex scheduling app I was working on it made some early, stripped down versions easy, but the cost rose quickly as I tried to add meat to those bones.

Rather more that 20 years after my first chance to use C (anyone else remember BDS C for CP/M?), I find that there are languages that work differently than C (or C++, which in some important ways is just a false front hung in front of C to disguise it), and for these languages the static type checking that is so essential in C - because the static checking, limited as it is, is the only sanity check you get - is simply irrelevant. I know I won't convince you: this is something that everyone has to learn for themselves. At least that has been my experience.

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