dynamic classes and duck typing

[Pelle Månsson]

retard wrote:
> Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:22:10 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> bearophile wrote:
>>> 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/
>> Sure, but that's not about the language. It's about the richness of the
>> ecosystem that supports the language, and Python certainly has a rich
>> one.
> 
> I thought D was supposed to be a practical language for real world 
> problems. This 'D is good because everything can and must be written in 
> D' is beginning to sound like a religion. To me it seems the Python way 
> is more practical in all ways. Even novice programmers can produce 
> efficient programs with it by using a mixture of low level C/C++ libs and 
> high level python scripts.
> 
> I agree that Python isn't as fast as D and it lacks type safety things 
> and so on, but in the end of day the Python coder gets the job done while 
> the D coder still fights with inline assembler, compiler bugs, porting 
> the app, fighting the type system (mostly purity/constness issues). 
> Python has more libs available, you need to write less code to implement 
> the same functionality and it's all less troublesome because the lack of 
> type annotations. So it's really understandable why a greater amount 
> people favor Python.
You don't actually have to use pure, const, inline assembler, etc. D is 
a wonderful language to just do string-and-hashtable code in. All the 
other features are there to help bigger projects (contracts, yay!) or 
projects with special needs (I for one have never needed inline ASM).