dynamic classes and duck typing

[bearophile]

Walter Bright:

> I meant it in the form of the simpler being better hypothesis.

I see, I have missed that purpose of the discussion... I am sorry.


> The very existence of those shows that Python itself is not powerful enough.

Right. But what people care in the end is programs that get the work done. If a mix of Python plus C/C++ libs are good enough and handy enough then they get used. For example I am able to use the PIL Python lib with Python to load, save and process jpeg images at high-speed with few lines of handy code. So I don't care if PIL is written in C++:
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/


> Secondly, use of them does not make Python a simple language.

Python is simpler than D2, but it's not a simple language, it has many features, etc. A simple language is Scheme :-)


> And thirdly, any language can have extension libraries and processors.

That's true, but in practice there's difference from practice and theory :-)
- Are the libs you need to do X and Y and Z actually present and are they working well? It's often possible to find every kind of binding for Python.
- Are those libs powerful? CorePy allows you to write the most efficient code that runs with the SSE extensions.
- Is using those handy, with a nice syntax, with a nice try-test-debug cycle? Python allows for this too, allows to write wrappers with a good syntax, etc. And the shell allows you to try code, etc.

Bye,
bearophile