RE: Cons not working as advertized and other remarks

[Steven Knight]

> <snip>
> A last word about Scons. (please let's keep the perl-python dumb war out of
> this list) What's the use to rewrite a properly working program to python?
> Is it to be happy with it or did you add any functionalities? wouldn't it
> have better to add functionality to cons instead?
> </snip>
> 
> I'm part of the SCons project.  The idea I get from Steve Knight is that
> Cons has always been a prototype.  Looking at the Perl code, it's all in one
> big file, all mushed together, lots of hacks, difficult to maintain or
> enhance significantly.  All stuff you'd expect from a prototype.

"Always a prototype" overstates the case a little.  I wouldn't put in
the time on Cons code that I have if it weren't real.  But I certainly
used Cons as a prototype implementation in figuring out what to do and
not do in SCons.

> Python as a language is better suited to larger-scale, ongoing projects, as
> we want SCons to be.  There are other reasons for the choice of Python over
> Perl...I don't want to risk sparking a holy war by enumerating all of them.
> Suffice it to say that one of our main objectives was to make SCons
> accessible to people who are not Python experts.  As a non-Perl-expert, I
> feel significantly hampered when using Cons due to Perl's, shall we say,
> creative syntax rules.  Python's syntax (at least at the most basic level)
> is more intuitive, and I believe it meets our goal of accessibility to
> Python newbies well.
> 
> Finally, the SCons proposal is what won the Software Carpentry contest after
> all!  You'd have to ask Steve for his reasons for proposing the project in
> Python rather than Perl, but I for one am glad he did.  Mainly because I
> would not have been able to contribute nearly as much!

Aside from the fact that Software Carpentry mandated everything be
in Python, I thought the idea was intriguing because it married the
superior Cons architecture to the friendlier Python syntax.  The proof
will be in whether or not new users really do find SCons easy to grasp
and work with.  (I still have my doubts about pure OO as an initial
programming paradigm.)

        --SK