Elf Sternberg

One of the things I like about python is the way you can hybridize objects and functional programming. In my example, I had a List of Objects, each of which represented a remote user and methods for determining his or her authentication. I wanted only the names of those users who had SNMP authentication. Here's the code:

snmpUserNames = map( lambda a: a.getName(), filter( lambda a: a.getType() == 'SNMP', lUSers) )

The map and filter keywords are functional: they allow one to perform either named or anonymous functions (lambda allows the generation of anonymous functions with very locally scoped variables-- no contamination of the surrounding variable namespace occurs) on a collection (lUsers) of objects. This is a very trivial example, but it shows one of the steps in going from raw data to highly refined and precise output: for every user in lUsers, generate a list that has SNMP access, and then from that list generate a list of usernames. Using traditional 'for' loops and 'if' statments, this could get long, ugly, and error-prone.

Python is simply easier to learn than Perl, and by definition that makes it easier to write. A Perl programmer, a good one, can write miraculous filters in seconds-- but large programs in Perl are impossible to read.