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Re: The Browser Wars are Dead! Long Live the Browser Wa rs!

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: The Browser Wars are Dead! Long Live the Browser Wa rs!
• From: Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@g...>
• Date: 24 Oct 2002 03:43:35 +0200
• In-reply-to: <200210231401.KAA22760@m...>
• References: <200210231401.KAA22760@m...>
• Sender: larsga@p...
• User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1

* John Cowan
| 
| Python is essentially Scheme with indentation instead of
| parentheses.

I don't think this really is true. The design of Scheme favours purity
of design and The Right Thing over everything else, while Python is
very much a worse-is-better language where practicality is everything.
Scheme has no built-in library, where in Python this is a major
component of the language. Scheme makes few, if any, concessions to
practical use, whereas in Python this is the primary concern.

The one thing that has been central to Scheme since it was invented:
continuations (and to a lesser degree, closures) is completely missing
from Python and nobody would ever even consider adding it. Scheme has
only one way to build programs: closures, while in Python you have
functions and classes.

They are also different with regards to syntax (fixed in Python),
scope model (dynamic and somewhat simplistic in Python), portability
(Scheme is very carefully defined, but in Python much depends on the C
layer on each platform), and much much more.

In fact, it's difficult to see what is similar about the two
languages. It would be interesting to hear why you think they are so
similar. 

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >
 

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