On 01:01 PM 12/30/2002 -0500, the keyboard of python-list-requ...@python.org emitted:
>If my experience counts >for anything, those who have C(++) (and for different reasons also >PHP, VisualBasic etc.) for a first language far more often turn out >being just coders as opposed to real programmers.
I've seen way too many here in the university I'm attending. :-/ Few people are capable of gasping the concepts _without_ explaining directly in a particular language
I started with BASIC, which at that time screwed my head up... I was 13 at the time. I hated it, in fact, it nearly put me off computers completely. But that was 22 years ago... (ouch - makes me feel REALLY old!)
"Languages" I've played with (seriously or otherwise)...
For me Python has been the fastest to learn and get productive with. I'm teaching my 7-year old daughter to use the 'turtle' module for simple graphics, as an intro... she's picking it up fine, too.
For purity, IMHO you can't beat Oberon (check google). Being a purist's language, it's got a bit of a steep learning curve, even from its forebears (i.e. Pascal or Modula).
The worst languages, IMHO are the C variants, as they seem to make an art out of translating bit-rot into executable code (Purely *MY* opinion). I feel they teach you bad habits and that what you really learn is how to look clever, not BE clever.
You can do loads of really cool stuff in Python, and still read (and understand) it after 2 months or more, too!
So far, no task I've attempted with Python has lead me down a blind alley. It's my current favourite (not likely to change for a quite while either)...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Hmmm, I wonder if the originator will ever see this...
> >Hello, everyone, I am a 9th grade student, who is very interested in > > learning programming. [snip] > > I have seriously considered C( I even bought and > > started on a book > >about it), Python(my original choice, however, teachers deterred me from > > it), > C/C++ are great languages, once you get the hang on them. On the beginning, > they are kind of rough. Once you have a clearer picture, it gets "easier" > to write it. Compile the code is an horror story, though.
Yeah, I didn't start with C, although I picked it up quickly when I moved to it (from Basic, and then Pascal). The trick about C is that you have to learn about the machine model, as well as basic algorithms, at the same time. C has pointers which you basically HAVE to learn (and many an experienced programmer that I've met STILL get confused by pointers, there relationship to C arrays, etc.)
So, my view is if someone wants to learn more abstract programming concepts (algorithms, data structures, program flow, etc.) and is not as interested in hardware (bit operations, memory allocation and use, stack versus heap, etc.) a language like pascal, or Python, or Basic, or Modula would all be okay. And certainly Python is up there in terms of elegance and power.
People who like hardware and want to learn more low level programming would probably like C as a first language, but the trick is that they often already understand many of the machine concepts (and may know assembly language, for example).
Based of what I saw in college, where C was used as the "Programming 101" course (algorithms, sorting, searching, etc.), LOTS of people had trouble with it, whereas I would assume many of those people might have had less trouble with Python (aside from beginners issues about editing, and some conceptual issues if OOP was introduced poorly). Using Python 2.2.2, and "from __future__ import division" would be a good first step as well. :)
Once you understand:
basic looping recursion simple data structures (arrays, lists, dictionaries, structures, whatever) basic file IO basic interactive IO (screen printing, keyboard input) simple algorithms( counting, simple math, ie, the REAL basics) and of course, "if" statements
then you can start adapting to other language concepts that C, C++, Python and other languages provide.
>So far, no task I've attempted with Python has lead me down a blind alley. >It's my current favourite (not likely to change for a quite while either)...
"...blind alley." For me, too early to tell, since I just started today. I'm not sure yet if it is as simple as clicking on your code writing program and typing in your code and then clicking "Save As...".....
BASIC is "easy" if you have an easy-to-use version; some are variously difficult for various people. Since you were only 13 years old when you first tried, you may have been too immature(not grown enough) at that time to be able to adequately learn it. Almost the same thing with me. I struggled very badly with BASIC-Plus studying at a university; but 2 years ago, I began to learn a more recent form of BASIC and have progressed much more easily.
On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Peter Hansen wrote: > Yu Wang wrote:
> > For commercial usage, ( sorry, I would say it twice ), python program is > > simple, clear, maintainable..., but it's slow.
> As a developer of commercial software written in Python, I have to say > that Yu Wang's statement about Python's speed is simply not always true. > I would even venture to suggest that it is only rarely true.
Here here! Plus, there's a lot more to performance than just CPU performance. Our commercial Python software is network bound first, disk bound second, and CPU bound third (meaning, under most circumstances CPU speed isn't an issue, so neither is Python).
IOW, with some of our stuff we _do_ have some performance requirements (e.g. "need to sustain X Mbps of traffic throughput across Y connections..") and our pure Python apps meet the requirements quite well.
In article <mailman.1041399123.31276.python-l...@python.org>, Terry Hancock <hanc...@anansispaceworks.com> wrote: . . .
>Actually I'm sure all those languages will still be used by somebody, but >relative popularity is fickle. Just compare the current marketplace with >where it was ten years ago (1993). Remember, that's the year HTTP was first >deployed. Linux was a fledgling and hardly anyone had heard of Python (I >don't actually know when Python was invented). Java was hardly known either. >Perl was around, but not that widely used (because it was the web that made >it insanely popular). I don't think CGI had been invented, and C/C++ >dominated the commercial programming marketplace. People who wanted to sound
. . . I'll leave aside questions about the acceptance of C++ in commercial programming at the beginning of '93, and whether Perl was "widely used".
I'm not sure what you mean by "deployed". <URL: http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Link.html > has been in *use* since late 1990. In January 1993, there were over four dozen public HTTP server known. RFC 1945 specified HTTP 1.0 in 1996 (!), but it states, "HTTP has been in use ... since 1990."
Guido invented Python in '90--he'd been designing it over the winter '89 holidays. First public re- least was in 1991. c.l.p was created in 1994.
Sun formally announced Java at SunWorld '95 (May 23). Usable forms of the language were in the lab around a year earlier (*not* in 1991, though you'll sometimes see that), but it was only early in 1995 that the name "Java" was adopted, or that outsiders had a chance to use it. --
I'm not sure when CGI was invented, but I wrote one in '92 :-)
We (University of Canterbury Physics, at the time) had been using a lot of Fortran (of course), C and Lisp, with a little Perl and lots of shellscripts for glue. When Java arrived, the general impression was that it was a cute toy. That's still basically my impression, it's mostly useful for UI work and areas where performance doesn't matter (there's lots of those, which is why Java is popular).
I'm just irritated I didn't find Python myself until '01.
Andrew
--On Sunday, January 05, 2003 13:38:26 +0000 Cameron Laird
<cla...@lairds.com> wrote: > In article <mailman.1041399123.31276.python-l...@python.org>, > Terry Hancock <hanc...@anansispaceworks.com> wrote: > . > . > . >> Actually I'm sure all those languages will still be used by somebody, >> but relative popularity is fickle. Just compare the current >> marketplace with where it was ten years ago (1993). Remember, that's >> the year HTTP was first deployed. Linux was a fledgling and hardly >> anyone had heard of Python (I don't actually know when Python was >> invented). Java was hardly known either. Perl was around, but not that >> widely used (because it was the web that made it insanely popular). I >> don't think CGI had been invented, and C/C++ dominated the commercial >> programming marketplace. People who wanted to sound > . > . > . > I'll leave aside questions about the acceptance of > C++ in commercial programming at the beginning of > '93, and whether Perl was "widely used".
> I'm not sure what you mean by "deployed". <URL: > http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Link.html > > has been in *use* since late 1990. In January 1993, > there were over four dozen public HTTP server known. > RFC 1945 specified HTTP 1.0 in 1996 (!), but it > states, "HTTP has been in use ... since 1990."
> Guido invented Python in '90--he'd been designing > it over the winter '89 holidays. First public re- > least was in 1991. c.l.p was created in 1994.
> Sun formally announced Java at SunWorld '95 (May > 23). Usable forms of the language were in the > lab around a year earlier (*not* in 1991, though > you'll sometimes see that), but it was only early > in 1995 that the name "Java" was adopted, or that > outsiders had a chance to use it. > --
Seems I have entered the bomb-area :) This topic should have been talked about for dozens of months. I do miss something when I'm talking about "speed". And sorry for this :) You all have your own ways of "speed",right? All in all, python is a pretty good language. And it works fine in more conditions than I think :)
Dave Brueck wrote: >On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Peter Hansen wrote:
>>Yu Wang wrote:
>>>For commercial usage, ( sorry, I would say it twice ), python program is >>>simple, clear, maintainable..., but it's slow.
>>As a developer of commercial software written in Python, I have to say >>that Yu Wang's statement about Python's speed is simply not always true. >>I would even venture to suggest that it is only rarely true.
>Here here! Plus, there's a lot more to performance than just CPU >performance. Our commercial Python software is network bound first, disk >bound second, and CPU bound third (meaning, under most circumstances CPU >speed isn't an issue, so neither is Python).
>IOW, with some of our stuff we _do_ have some performance requirements >(e.g. "need to sustain X Mbps of traffic throughput across Y >connections..") and our pure Python apps meet the requirements quite well.
Andrew McGregor wrote: > We (University of Canterbury Physics, at the time) had been using a > lot of > Fortran (of course), C and Lisp, with a little Perl and lots of > shellscripts for glue. When Java arrived, the general impression was > that > it was a cute toy. That's still basically my impression, it's mostly > useful for UI work and areas where performance doesn't matter (there's > lots > of those, which is why Java is popular).
> I'm just irritated I didn't find Python myself until '01.
Same here (I found Python in early-mid 2000). I'm an experienced programmer, but had long wanted a high-level language bridging the gap between shell scripts and full-blown C or C++ programs. I had begrudgingly learned and used Perl to fill that gap, but quite frankly even while I was using it didn't enjoy it. (The object orientation in Perl, ugh.)
I constantly learn new languages, even ones I know I'll never use, to broaden by knowledge base, and one day picked up _Programming Python_ which I used for light bathroom reading. Even though I didn't much care for the book (but as an already experienced programmer it didn't stop me), it soon became apparent that Python was the language I was looking for. My first project was a socket-based bot framework for a proprietary talker, and my second was a full-blown implementation of a chess adjudicator.
"That'll do, Python."
-- Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/ __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE / \ The map is not the territory. \__/ Alfred Korzybski ZOE / http://www.alcyone.com/pyos/zoe/ A simple Python OpenGL rendering engine.
> That would be an interesting approach. I think everybody should learn > PDP-11 assembly and look at the instruction set at the > machine level. It > was a beautiful design.
The Nova 2 (also a descendent of the PDP-8) was a much nicer design than the PDP-11. Very consistent.
> > I'm even hoping to teach a class that way...
> I wonder if you could find a PDP-11 simulator and assembler > somewhere...
I wrote as a group final-year uni project some time ago a Nova 2 simulator called "Satori" (named after "Nova Satori" in Robotech: The Robotech Masters ;) I even wrote an assembler for it.
Front panel with usable switches, teletype, tape reader and puncher, the works. Fun stuff. Written in C on the Mac.
My recommendation for a high-schooler wishing to learn programming is to definitely go with Python. Even if you never use the language later in life (which I doubt) it is an excellent language for learning many of the important concepts and disciplines required in programming. It is also a language which you can grow with as you learn other languages and see how to apply different concepts. In particular, I often prototype things in Python as a way to gather my thoughts before sitting down and properly designing something, independent of which language the final product will be written in.
>> That would be an interesting approach. I think everybody should >> learn PDP-11 assembly and look at the instruction set at the >> machine level. It >> was a beautiful design.
It surely was. I love 'JMP .foo'[1]
> The Nova 2 (also a descendent of the PDP-8) was a much nicer design > than the PDP-11. Very consistent.
I don't remember PDP11 assembler as being terribly inconsistent.
>> > I'm even hoping to teach a class that way...
>> I wonder if you could find a PDP-11 simulator and assembler >> somewhere...
There is very definitely a PDP11 emulator that runs on Linux, at least two major financial institutions[2] run their back office systems[3] on it[4]. Whether it is freely available, I am unsure, I will make inquiries.
> I wrote as a group final-year uni project some time ago a Nova 2 > simulator called "Satori" (named after "Nova Satori" in Robotech: The > Robotech Masters ;) I even wrote an assembler for it.
> Front panel with usable switches, teletype, tape reader and puncher, > the works. Fun stuff. Written in C on the Mac.
I'd be interested in seeing that if you still have it.
[1] Which of course is a no-op. [2] No names, they embarass easily... [3] Legacy Systems eh, Gor bless 'em. [4] Parts for PDP11's are about as common as rocking horse droppings, I made a killing on my spare PDP11/73[5]. [5] No, you can't afford the non-spare one[6]. [6] Hasty correction, you *almost certainly* can't afford...
-- Dan Smart. C++ Programming and Mentoring. cpp...@dansmart.com ADDvantaged
Nick Vargish <n...@adams.patriot.net> writes: > Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> writes: > > (The object orientation in Perl, ugh.) > They added object orientation to Perl?
Yes, the swiss army chainsaw of programming languages now has an OO blade.
> p.s. I'm joking! I know about it, I just refuse to look at it.
Probably for the best, especially if you recently ate.
<mike -- Mike Meyer <m...@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
William Park wrote: > Chewdip20 <chewdi...@aol.com> wrote:
(snip)
> I get back to school the week after next, and I >>want to have some intermediate knowledge of a language by then. I get >>little time to do anything I want after school, and thus my chances to >>further my knowledge of a language would be severly limited to >>weekends, which are also packed for me. Basically, everyone, I need a >>language, I need it fast. Also, I have heard C and C++ are rough to >>start with. Any truth to this?
> C++ takes years. But, you can pick up C or Python in one week, and be > comfortable in one month.
Be conmfortable with C in one month ? Only learning it on spare time ? Seems a bit short to me !...
Speed is so subjective! A bad algorithm will make a bad program in any language!
I moved from using Oberon (a compiled language) to Python about 18 months ago, for various 'scripting' tasks at my workplace.
Ok, Oberon isn't the fastest language around - the compiler I used wasn't optimised, but then it does pretty well without optimisation. I really like the clean-ness (to my eye) of oberon, but wanted the interactivity of an interpreted language. I had exhausted the possibilities of NT batch-script, QBasic (yuk!) and started reading up on perl. I was not impressed, as I have always preferred the 'pascal' type syntax, shunning C and its cronies.
I can't even remember how I stumbled accross Python, but I can remember feeling I'd 'come home' when I tried it!
The first thing I did was convert my work-in-progress directory size analyzer and found, to my amazement, that it ran about the same speed. To boot, the os.stat function did not suffer from the same memory leaks as its oberon counterpart.
Recently, our company has migrated from Novell Netware 5 to Windows 2000, and I had to shift about 350GB of data from one server to another, in roughly 50GB chunks. We had tried 'robocopy' which was hopelessly slow, and I couldn't find any comparable products online.
I had, years ago, written an incremental directory copier in Modula-2, so I decided to rewrite it in Python. Works a treat:
On a 394MB, P4/2000 windows XP pro w/s, with 100Mb/s ethernet:
From memory, when testing: copy command: roughly 600K/s explorer copy: roughly 500K/s robocopy: roughly 1000K/s
Today: bulkloader.py: roughly 4000-8000K/s
It uses a brute-force copy, i.e. just loads up each file and writes it to dest. Good excuse to have extra memory! ;-)
I have been using this program recently to benchmark our server performance, as we have been experiencing performance problems (network incompatabilities etc.) It's been invaluable.
Python may be interpreted, and may not execute at /n/ mflops, but what it lacks in /raw/ oomph, it really makes up for in /efficiency/ and /development/ /speed/! The stuff that needs to be fast, generally is, and the rest generally doesn't matter to me...
Beats batch-script senseless, and you can still read (and understand) code a year later (unlike perl,C/C++ etc.).
Nick Vargish wrote: > Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> writes:
> > (The object orientation in Perl, ugh.)
> They added object orientation to Perl?
> Nick
> p.s. I'm joking! I know about it, I just refuse to look at it.
Even taken at face value, that jokingly-phrased question really does just about sum it up. It is a grotesque and painfully transparent hack. I know friends that have been introduced to basic object orientation concepts through Perl, the poor lost souls.
-- Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/ __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE / \ Can I walk with you / Through your life \__/ India Arie Bosskey.net: Quake III Arena / http://www.bosskey.net/q3a/ A personal guide to Quake III Arena.
> Even taken at face value, that jokingly-phrased question really does > just about sum it up.
I meant it as a "ha ha, only serious" kind of comment.
Back when OO was becoming trendy, I went and learned Smalltalk to get an idea of what all the fuss was about. Beautiful and elegant in almost every way (except notationally), I was very taken by the concept.
At the time OO was being introduced to Perl, I was making my living doing brutal things to corporate data with Perl and quite enjoying it. The OO stuff made me lose any interest I had in going further with Perl; in my opinion, it should have stayed a uber-sripting language, and left complex and/or large-scale development to other languages.
> It is a grotesque and painfully transparent hack.
I think "hack" gives it too much credit. How about "kludge"? I have an enormous amount of respect for lwall, but this is one area where he did nobody any favors...
Nick
-- #include<stdio.h> /* SigMask 0.3 (sig.c) 19990429 PUBLIC DOMAIN "Compile Me" */ int main(c,v)char *v;{return !c?putchar(*v-1)&&main(0,v+ /* Tweaks welcomed. */ 1):main(0,"Ojdl!Wbshjti!=obwAqbusjpu/ofu?\v\1");} /* build: cc -o sig sig.c */
> > Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> writes: > > > (The object orientation in Perl, ugh.) > > They added object orientation to Perl?
> Yes, the swiss army chainsaw of programming languages now has an OO > blade.
> > p.s. I'm joking! I know about it, I just refuse to look at it.
> Probably for the best, especially if you recently ate.
Although I still like Perl, yes, the OO stuff is rather interesting, certainly unique. It works, though. Larry Wall (along with lots of other people) is working on Perl 6 these days, which looks like it'll have enough changes in it to make it virtually a whole new language. Not new enough for dedicated Pythonistas, probably! ;-) It'll still have punctuation and block delimiters :-). ... and OO will be done right this time! Yay!
In article <3E144BFC.399B8...@engcorp.com>, "Peter Hansen"
<pe...@engcorp.com> wrote: >... > ** "too slow" is almost always defined incorrectly. In most cases, it > means "I think this should run faster". In fact, it should be defined > as "my customers *require* that this run faster" or something more like > that. Most developers are wrong about how fast things really need to > run... (maybe because they have no requirements.)
Oh, hell ya. I ran into that a bunch when my company (eShop) was acquired and we arrived at Microsoft with a bunch of Python code in hand. "We have to rewrite it in C! It's too slow!" "Really? How fast should it be?" "Um...."
Of course, they still ended up rewriting it... (but in all fairness, it was probably better as it increased the number of developers who could actually work on the code and maintain it)
> Another key point is that most people start to optimize their code > *without* having profiled it first, and *without* making sure the code > is actually working properly first (i.e. "finished") . Optimization > without profiling is always bad and, to quote Knuth yet again, > "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
The quote I always use is: 90% of the time, you're wrong about where you spend 90% of the time.
In the case of the eShop code, we were mostly network and database bound. Changing the stuff in between would do very, very little. And even then, the bulk of what it *did* do was template processing. And that was all Python string handling, which was in C anyways!
andy wrote: >Speed is so subjective! A bad algorithm will make a bad program in any >language!
Agree :) "Computer Science is something about algorithm" I cannot remember the exact sentence. But it should be Knuth's remark :)
>Python may be interpreted, and may not execute at /n/ mflops, but what it >lacks in /raw/ oomph, it really makes up for in /efficiency/ and >/development/ /speed/! The stuff that needs to be fast, generally is, and >the rest generally doesn't matter to me...
>Beats batch-script senseless, and you can still read (and understand) code a >year later (unlike perl,C/C++ etc.).
Here, it just spurs me to add some agreements to this thread, though I'm thinking about stop to add more "stupid comments" to it :) The elegancy of codes organization is the first promotion to my studying python. I still remember my CSH scripts full of "$" and "\" "/" that make my eyes green. I'm wondering whether there'll be a easy way to implement Shell commands. Like Perl does with "``".
Nick Vargish wrote: > At the time OO was being introduced to Perl, I was making my living > doing brutal things to corporate data with Perl and quite enjoying > it. The OO stuff made me lose any interest I had in going further with > Perl; in my opinion, it should have stayed a uber-sripting language, > and left complex and/or large-scale development to other languages.
As I mentioned, I've used it, and I've used the object oriented facilities. They "work," but they left a seriously bad taste in my mouth, even before I knew and grew to enjoy Python.
-- Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/ __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE / \ Nobody can reach me, nobody can touch me; it's a wonderful feeling. \__/ Aaliyah Maths reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/maths/ A mathematics reference.
I just eyeballed the Eiffel web site. Eiffel Studio is only $8000. I was sort of interested, until I happened to come across the price, at which point my mouse started to tingle.
I suppose the free version would be okay, but are GPL'ed apps considered "non-commercial"? If not, there would be no sense in my delving seriously into their free version if I can't release anything, and even when I do get to that point, it would take just long enough to save up $8000 that by the time I sent off the money order, the price would be $16,000. LOL
That having been said, Eiffel would still be worth your looking into, perhaps, because chances are that, if you used your Eiffel training, it would be in a corporate setting where they've paid the licensing fee, not you. I don't want to discourage your looking into Eiffel, I just found the sticker shock to be quite dazzling. That's all I'll say about the Eiffel thing, because this is, after all, a Python group. <snicker>
And yes, folks, I'm not a professional programmer, I'm a forklift driver that is trying to learn to *be* a professional programmer.
One thing I would say is that you do have it quite a bit easier, stepping in at this point without any experience. Just like you, I got interested in programming in high school (the mid 1980s), before OOP was the "big thing." In fact, my first language was TRS-DOS BASIC, but the one I really took to at the time was USCD Pascal on an apple IIc.
After high school, my life took a different route and I ran off and joined the circus. Uh ... I mean, the Army. At any rate, I strayed away from programming until 1997. My biggest struggle in learning the new languages has been the fact that I have such trouble grasping the concept of OOP. This is one of the reasons why Python has an appeal -- with Java, I'm forced to "OOP or nothing," and I flop horribly at it. With Python, I've found a sort of happy medium, where I've been slowing easing myself into the "modern paradigm" of objects.
Since you will be starting out with objects, classes, inheritance, polymorphine ... uh ... polymorphism, etc., you will have a lot easier time because you will not have to unlearn the procedural way of looking at a problem.
I've studied C++, and while I am not in complete agreement that it is completely unlearnable within a month or two, the language is like scrubbing your kitchen floor with a toothbrush ... yeah, it gets the floor clean, but damn it's a lot of work. Just for my own uses, anyway, Python is superb, quite easy to pick up, and I've found that the kitchen floor comes just as clean if I use a mop.
Okay, I'll shut up now. Thanks for putting up with me.
Have a wonderful day!
Travis Beaty Mason City, Iowa.
Hrvoje Nezic wrote: > Hi,
> I have a very long experience in programming in different > languages. For long time I programmed in C. > Then I become familiar with object oriented programming > through Smalltalk. When C++ compilers appeared I > started to program in C++ and I do it now, not > because this is my decision, but because my company > forces me to do so. If I could choose by myself, I > would never, never choose C++ (after having long experience > in using it). I am also familiar with Java and C#.
> I would suggest you to try both. You can download > ISE Eiffel at www.eiffel.com . A free version is about > 50 Mb. I am not sure for Mac, but Visual Eiffel has > a version for Mac. Eiffel environments give you certain > important features that cannot be easily found elsewhere. > Also, compared with Python, the free ISE Eiffel compiler > comes with a full featured, professional debugger, and this > is something I miss in Python.
> Eiffel has very clean and understandable syntax, and this > is why it is used on many universities in introductory > programming courses.
} > I'm wondering whether there'll be a easy way to implement Shell commands. > Like Perl does with "``".
And what's wrong with os.popen? Sure, it's a bit more verbose than `...`, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I quite writing `...` even in the shell, and use $(...) for readability these days.
<mike -- Mike Meyer <m...@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
Travis Beaty <t_be...@mchsi.com> writes: > I just eyeballed the Eiffel web site. Eiffel Studio is only $8000. I > was sort of interested, until I happened to come across the price, at > which point my mouse started to tingle.
> I suppose the free version would be okay, but are GPL'ed apps > considered "non-commercial"? If not, there would be no sense in my > delving seriously into their free version if I can't release anything, > and even when I do get to that point, it would take just long enough > to save up $8000 that by the time I sent off the money order, the > price would be $16,000. LOL
You really should ask this on c.l.eiffel. But there are open source apps around that compile with eiffel studio, so I assume that GPL'ed apps are non-commercial. Of course, to be sure, you can ask them.
Personally, I use SmartEiffel. It's free, and comes with full source. It even has a DICTIONARY class that's almost as fast as Pythons. The commercial Eiffels don't run on BSD-based systems, even under Unix emulation. Since they don't give me source, I can't try and fix them :-(.
<mike -- Mike Meyer <m...@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
|
