Re: Why context-free?

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
|> Darius Blasband <darius@raincode.com> writes:
|>
|> >[Python has a much cleaner syntax than perl, but never got perl's critical
|> >mass.
|>
|> Well, the data I have on programming language popularity
|> <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/>
|> certainly indicates that Python got a critical mass. Indeed, it seems
|> to gain popularity, while Perl seems to lose popularity; indeed,
|> Python seems to be more popular than perl since 2003. Of course, my
|> methodology for estimating the popularity is questionable (as is any I
|> have seen), but it certainly indicates that Python is very popular.


My observations indicate that it has a critical mass and is growing in
relative popularity, but I would not go as far as you.


|> > I think this tells us that syntactic elegance isn't a big issue for
|> >language users. -John]


Anyone like to justify Fortran's or C's? Yes, quite.


|> Conversely, maybe the increase in the popularity of Python is based on
|> its syntactic characteristsics, at least in part.
|>
|> Disclaimer: I have never programmed in Python, and very little
|> in Perl.


I have, and do. It is one of my main reasons, though really only as
part of the "When I make an error, tell me I am an idiot, don't just
do something unpredictable."




Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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