-talkers,

Today I saw a blog by Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, on
www.artima.com in which he criticized Ruby's mutable strings - saying
that of such a horror he could ne'er conceive, or something :)

Anyway, all the discussion I've seen about (im)mutable strings has
focused on implementation and efficiency.  LISP may be a
counter-example, but I'm not sure, and its paradigm is different.  I'd
like to know what the design considerations are.

So, is van Rossum's point valid?  I must say, immutable strings sound
elegant to me for some reason I can't work out, but then Ruby has
oh-so-cool symbols anyway.  What are the pros and cons of Ruby and
Python on the string department?

BTW the URL for that blog is http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=7589

Gavin