[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: Results: finished teaching one Dylan course
Wolfgang Grafen wrote:
> Considering the traffic in the news-groups of Dylan and Python my
> impression is Dylan is much less popular (and
> Python is much less popular than Perl).
Hey, it's very popular with the people who use it. Which is often not the way
with Perl. ;-)
> A Dylan expert might say all what you can do with Python you can also do
> with Dylan, maybe even better.
Each has their strenghts, they are designed for different problem domains.
Python is a very good scripting / regexp / text processing language. My first
job was validating web site content using Python scripts I wrote for the task
(this was 3.5 years ago), and I chose Python over the alternatives. As a
scripting language, it compares to Perl, TCL or AppleScript rather than an
application programming language like Dylan. Dylan compares to Lisp or C++.
Favourably.
> My Python experience is now for 3 years so programming in Dylan will be
> definitely more difficult for me.
I learnt Python before I learnt Dylan. Both are object oriented, roughly
Algol-syntax languages (beleive it or not), so you should be able to usefully
transfer your experience.
> Becoming more familiar with Dylan when speeding up some few critical Python
> code would be my preferred way...
That's cool. As people have pointed out, both Gwydion Dylan and Functional
Developer are designed to play well with C, and Python is also designed to
interface to C. You could embed a Python interpreter in a Dylan program, or
write a Python module in Dylan.
See the "learning" section of http://www.gwydiondylan.org/ for examples and
tutorials.
- Rob.
--
Rob Myers - robm@h2g2.com H2G2 - http://www.h2g2.com/
MacOS wonderfulness for The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Game.
"Arthur bought the Apple anyway."-So Long & Thanks For All The Fish.
References: