The Python item

Sep 16 23:33 UTC 2006

The Python programming language came out of the Amoeba distributed operating
system built by Andy Tanenbaum at the Free University in Amsterdam.  Guido
van Rossum, who was working in the Amoeba group, wanted a systems programming
language somewhere between C and the Bourne shell, and created Python.

Python now runs on a variety of different platforms, is fully object-oriented,
compiles to an internal bytecode representation, and features an extensive
class library.  Ask about it here.

response 2 of 9:

Sep 22 22:30 UTC 2006

i like how the Python interpreter in Windows comes with a programming manual.

response 4 of 9:

Jan 5 10:31 UTC 2010

I do not like how I cannot read Python code on a 80-character terminal.  I
think the funny structural indentation concept just leaves older hardware out.

response 6 of 9:

Jan 13 15:32 UTC 2010

Yes, but try setting column width on a real VT-100 from circa 1980
sometime.

response 8 of 9:

Jan 18 01:57 UTC 2010

resp:6 That sort of pre-dates Python by a good few years.
By the time that language came to be, graphic terminals with bitmapped
displays were quite common.  This slavery to 80 column lines is counter-
productive.

That said, I write Python code that's mandated to have 80 column lines
all the time in my civilian job (which I haven't been at in a couple of
months now, but I digress).  See, e.g.,

http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.html#Line_length

resp:7 132, I believe.