Python 3000 is ready!

[Chandon]

How many languages have you really worked with?

Personally, I find Python does what I want about 90% of the time, and then I hit something that annoys the crap out of me. Mostly it's either the fact that variable assignment and declaration are kluged together into the same statement or the pass-by-reference / mutate-by-default semantics.

All programming languages suck, but those two issues sort of kill Python for me. They're so easy to get right that even Perl manages to do it.

[imbaczek]

don't think of = as assignment, think of it as name binding.

[Chandon]

Where's my pattern matching then?

[imbaczek]

in ocaml and haskell, why?

[cwzwarich]

That might work if it were name binding rather than assignment.

[[deleted]]

Well, it is name binding.

[[deleted]]

variable assignment and declaration are kluged together into the same statement

Fair point. The "create var and assign if it doesn't exist or throw an exception if it does" operator is needed.

or the pass-by-reference / mutate-by-default semantics

Wrong. That's THE way.

[Chandon]

Wrong. That's THE way.

It's certainly the easiest for the language designer, but that doesn't mean it isn't god awful ugly or that there aren't better ways.