Re: [Axiom-developer] domains with parameters versus Python classes

[Ondrej Certik]

> But the point of this exercise for me is still to present Spad
> for Python programmers - not really an argument for or against
> one or the other. Presenting it this way as a challenge seems
> like a way of motivating more interest in this subject. I think this
> is important for some of the same reasons that people currently
> doing computer algebra and symbolic computation in Python
> (e.g. SymPy and Sage) think it is important: because there are
> a *lot* of people who know or are learning to program in Python
> while there is a much much smaller number of people who have
> or are developing the skills to program in Axiom. If Axiom (and
> Aldor) has a future, I think we have to find some way to interest
> even a small share of that talent.

I agree with this completely. And I think it is influencing to Aldor
users as well, to know, that Aldor is not the only possible way of
doing things and that many of the functionalities of Aldor they
thought are unique to it, can actually be done in for example Python
quite easily as well.

Of course, those comparisons of languages are always kind of a flame
war (try to find Python vs Ruby in google for example). I know Python,
but as I understand you can do almost all things in Ruby as well and
vice versa. As to Python vs Aldor, it's just my personal opinion, I
think the differences are also small in a sense, that what can be done
in Aldor could be done in Python (maybe using a different way of
programming, unusual for Aldor developers) and vice versa. But if you
find an example, that shows that really Aldor can do things better, I
am interested in that.

But if you don't, then (again just my opinion), I think it's not wise
to use a language that almost noone uses. The question really stands:
do some features of Aldor really make it worthy enough to use it
instead of some other language, that is used by 1000 (or maybe even
10000) times more people?

Please, don't take my questions as a provocation, I am just interested
in pure discussion, I just want to know all reasons why you chose
Aldor, as I think it's not wise and you also think that Python is not
wise (otherwise you would already used it), thus I want to understand
and point out each other's arguments.

Ondrej