python

It is "boot camp" season and I'm trying to master a lot of interconnected software systems. And still keep the other things running, of course... And strip and re-stain the deck.

The glue that holds the chunks together is python. I'd never gotten around to doing much more than "Hello world" in it, but the past few days have been fairly intense and I'm starting to see why people like it. It seems to be built to be glue. It is easy to include other language's modules (you can even include a java environment to run java--kludgy but it works) and create new interfaces on the fly. I finally learned what the "lambda" was good for in function definition. And it looks like there's one approach to strings (C is full of traps for the unwary or fumble-fingered).

Nothing is perfect, though. Logical blocks are defined using indentation, and if you cut and paste from somebody else's program you're apt to wind up mixing tabs and spaces--and your program will mysteriously quit working. And I'm finding myself swamped in possibilities: which package do I import to make histograms again? And the expert chatter in the background suggests that programs that work in one release don't work in another...