Avdi Grimm wrote:
> 
> ... Python, on the other hand, feels
> "accumulated".  Python, at version 2.1, is going through massive,
> code-breaking changes to fix admitted flaws and omissions in it's
> design.  

The only real massive code-breaking change is the division fix that will
take many years to phase in. And Ruby has the old Python behaviour so
arguably (ARGUABLY!) Python is fixing a bug that Ruby will have to fix
one day. I'd rather not rehash that division argument for the thousandth
time though. We'll have to wait and see what the future holds.

> On the one hand, it's great that Guido has the humility to
> fix the flaws, rather than gloss over them; but I get the feeling that
> Python is going to be a rather unstable language for awhile yet.

I don't know enough Ruby to be confident but I wonder if (other than the
integer division thing) Ruby isn't changing as much or more than Python.
But Ruby has a smaller user base, less deployed code, fewer commercial
products based upon it and a generally more sympathetic
root-for-the-underdog user community. For instance I noticed an email
recently where Dave Thomas said that Ruby wasn't preempting threads
properly on Windows. That kind of bug would raise screams of outrage in
the Python world because there is so much running code out there that it
would break. [ruby-talk:18699]

When Ruby is as popular as Python (to say nothing of Perl or Java), even
small changes will seem huge and unless Matz slows down, the language
will seem "unstable".

Python is changing a lot but most of the change is towards more
simplicity and elegance and very little of it breaks code.

>...
> In the end, of course, it all comes down to "use what you like". I
> just thought somone might be interested in the impressions of a
> software engineer learning both lanaguages for the first time.

Yes, it was very interesting!

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