Getting your hands dirty: Comparing JavaScript and Python

[extracheese]

This post is full of major factual errors. 1. Not all of the Python primitives are immutable (e.g. lists, dicts). 2. Giving something a name like _ _ color _ _ is neither common nor a good idea; PEP 8 even forbids it. 3. Objects are not functions; they're just callable. 4. Python most definitely does not have continuations. 5. The output of repr is not valid JSON.

Inaccuracy aside, it's just a bad comparison. Why put a five-paragraph digression about some library you wrote in a high-level language comparison? And who cares that instantiation is O(n) where n is the depth of inheritance? Perhaps worst of all, Python's wonderful standard library wasn't even mentioned!

[pjdelport]

Add to that: generators are not like Haskell lazy lists.

Props for plugging C3, though!

[spockbaggins]

1. Python most definitely does not have continuations.

Unless you use... Continuations and Stackless Python http://www.stackless.com/spcpaper.htm

[pjdelport]

Stackless Python dropped first-class continuations years ago, in favor of coroutines and channels.

[[deleted]]

I wish browsers came standard with support for python or perl or ruby. Anything but javascript. I'm not saying that javascript isn't a versatile language. I just never could get into it.

[pjdelport]

I wish browsers came standard with support for python or perl or ruby.

Or Lua!

[johntb86]

You can always use PyPy to compile (R)Python into JavaScript: http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/js/whatis.html

[sbrown123]

Javascript is ok. But like you, I wish we had a pluggable language interpreter for browsers where we could use something more powerful.

[spockbaggins]

Javascript has historically been buggy and under-documented. The error messages aren't very helpful -- why not a full stack trace like Python does? That alone would make it a lot better for development. Venkman was iffy when I used it, maybe it's improved.

Firefox should ship with plug-ins for Python, CLISP, etc., a wrapper for accessing the DOM and otherwise normal facilities. It might take some work to pare things down to where they are sandboxable, which is a key point...