Difference between revisions of "Talk:353: Python"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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The implication is that in Python many otherwise amazing things become easily possible after a simple import statement and/or that there is a module for almost anything you'd want to do no matter how difficult.[[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.216|199.27.130.216]] 16:30, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 
The implication is that in Python many otherwise amazing things become easily possible after a simple import statement and/or that there is a module for almost anything you'd want to do no matter how difficult.[[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.216|199.27.130.216]] 16:30, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
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The explanation was wrong about many things. Python doesn't have a heavily-simplified syntax--it's about as simple as Perl (and a lot less simple than Lisp); the difference is that it's designed first and foremost to be consistent, easy to read, and easy to remember, even at the cost of occasionally being more verbose or rigid. Its syntax doesn't generally reduce complicated things to a single word; it does allow many complicated things that might take 20 statements in C to be reduced to a single statement, but that's because it's high-level (again, like Perl), not because of its syntax. Dynamic typing has nothing to do with declaring the types of values, much less specifically numeric values, and it has nothing to do with Python automatically knowing how much space to reserve for a value--in fact, it's the opposite; C knows to reserve 4 bytes for an int variable at compile time, whereas Python has no idea what kind of value you're going to put into the variable until runtime. And "like in Visual Basic or JavaScript" is very confused--Visual Basic is statically typed, while JavaScript is dynamically typed, just like Python.
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Also, the explanation didn't explain why Cueball's friend was reticent to use dynamic typing or significant whitespace, or what the point of importing modules is.
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So I rewrote most of it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.69|162.158.255.69]] 20:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Revision as of 20:55, 15 September 2015

It is necessary for both Cueballs to sample the medicine cabinet in order for this to be a hallucination. It was probably python. 122.161.29.247 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Or maybe there is just one Cueball - the one on the ground who is hallucinating - because he tried everything...? ;-) Kynde (talk) 20:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

'I also sampled everything in the medicine cabinet for comparison' is a possible reference to George's Marvellous Medicine, the children's book written by Roald Dahl, wherein a combination of medicines and household materials produces fantastical effects. Quetzalcoatl (talk) 14:31, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I think it's related to the invention of photographs, but I'm not sure 173.245.48.81 06:19, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Woah guys, antigravity is a real module in Python! I was looking around the lib folder, trying to figure out how to put a module into it, and there it was - antigravity.py . It just sends your browser to the comic. --108.162.219.171 22:07, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's already covered in the Trivia section ;-) --SlashMe (talk) 23:22, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

The implication is that in Python many otherwise amazing things become easily possible after a simple import statement and/or that there is a module for almost anything you'd want to do no matter how difficult.199.27.130.216 16:30, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

The explanation was wrong about many things. Python doesn't have a heavily-simplified syntax--it's about as simple as Perl (and a lot less simple than Lisp); the difference is that it's designed first and foremost to be consistent, easy to read, and easy to remember, even at the cost of occasionally being more verbose or rigid. Its syntax doesn't generally reduce complicated things to a single word; it does allow many complicated things that might take 20 statements in C to be reduced to a single statement, but that's because it's high-level (again, like Perl), not because of its syntax. Dynamic typing has nothing to do with declaring the types of values, much less specifically numeric values, and it has nothing to do with Python automatically knowing how much space to reserve for a value--in fact, it's the opposite; C knows to reserve 4 bytes for an int variable at compile time, whereas Python has no idea what kind of value you're going to put into the variable until runtime. And "like in Visual Basic or JavaScript" is very confused--Visual Basic is statically typed, while JavaScript is dynamically typed, just like Python.

Also, the explanation didn't explain why Cueball's friend was reticent to use dynamic typing or significant whitespace, or what the point of importing modules is.

So I rewrote most of it. 162.158.255.69 20:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)