[TUHS] Re: python

Python has optional type annotations. There are batch tools (e.g., MyPy) to do type analysis and IDE's also provide help. Example: def greeting(name: str) -> str:     return 'Hello ' + name I found Python to be an enormous improvement over Perl for writing the kinds of things I used to write in Perl, with the Perl book at my side. I currently make my living working on Python for microcontrollers. Neverthless, I am fond of type checking too, and if I were writing a large Python system, I would use type annotations. I have used BCPL too, in the 70's, and we achieved some measure of type safety by careful naming. Dan H. On 8/3/23 10:19, Bakul Shah wrote: > I have not heard such horror stories about Common Lisp (or may be I have forgotten them!). My impression is that python doesn't quite have the kind of {meta,}programming tools Common Lisp has. CL has been used for large critical programs. Perhaps Von Rossum had more experience with statically typed languages than Lisp (because -- pure speculation here -- if he had used CL enough, he would never have designed python :-) > >> On Aug 3, 2023, at 1:32 AM, Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I once inherited maintenance of a critical piece of infrastructure written in exquisitely well written, tested, and documented Python. I mean it, it was really really good. >> >> It crashed about once a week and I had to fix it over and over because in those exponentially vast combinations of paths through the code would arise yet another way to turn a string into a list, or something analogous. It was hell. >> >> Critical code needs static typing. >> >> -rob >> >> >> On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM Bakul Shah <bakul(a)iitbombay.org> wrote: >> >> python can certainly implement tail call optimization (TCO). >> Pretty much any language can implement TCO but for some reason >> people think such programs are harder to debug (and yet they >> don't similarly complain about loops!). The beauty of Scheme was >> that it *mandated* tail recursion. >> >> > On Aug 2, 2023, at 8:24 PM, George Michaelson >> <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote: >> > >> > Tail recursion not lazy eval. >> > >> > I wish words meant what I meant "inside" when I think them, not >> > "outside" what they mean when I write them. >> >