Check out this Bruce Eckel interview at Borland’s community site. The interview’s all over the map, covering what you’d expect: C++, Delphi, Java, Borland’s IDEs, Java vs. C#, and of course, his new favourite language, Python. There’s also stuff you wouldn’t expect: his favourite song, his favourite movie, and whether he’d rather eat the fat from a moose’s eyeball or a Pop-Tart™ (really!).
In honour of tonight’s meeting of the pyGTA (Greater Toronto Area Python User Group), I’ll end with the most Pythonic quote from the article:
Saving the best for last [he discusses other programming languages just before this part], I’ve said in numerous places that Python is my favorite language, and this is because I’m most productive in that language. I can get so much more done in Python than in any other language I’ve encountered that it’s very hard for me to use those other languages, because to do so means throwing away time. Also, I’ve found the Python community to be my favorite group of language people; I can’t figure out how or why this is the case, but it retains the gentleness and enthusiasm that I most value in my interactions with a language community. I look forward to when I finally get my plate cleared enough that I can continue working on “Thinking in Python.”
2 replies on “Bruce Eckel interview at Borland’s Community site”
I used to admire Bruce, but ever since I read this:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/vframe.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/20135?19994-21355
I have a different opinion of him.
I liked matz’s comeback:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/vframe.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/20135?19994-21355
For the record, I am not a big python fan…
Hey, Joe!
Yeah, sooner or later, some big programiing pundit says something that completely gets up our noses. In my case, it’s Paul Graham (see http://paulgraham,com), Lisp weenie extraordinaire and his army of parenthesis-heads. He’s written some interesting articles about the nature of programming which I’ve liked, but other times, he really annoys the living crap out of me. It happens.
I like Python quite a bit, but I also made a living — and quite happily too — writing VB, so I can safely be classified as “out to lunch, don’t listen to him”. But Ruby is on my shortlist for “stuff to learn” as it’s a pretty interesting language. I also hear that there’s a pretty neat blogging app being written in it…