public class Test
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
for (String s : args[0].split("\\s+"))
System.out.println(s);
System.exit(0);
}
}
Snore. Guess where I stopped reading. Right where he stuck a completely pointless System.exit(0) for no reason except to boost linecount (linecount being the evilest evil known to man)
Lines of code accrue the same way interest does. An extra percent of yearly return may not seem like much in the first year, but after 50 years the difference is huge.
The same goes for code: 10 lines of java doesn't seem much larger than 5 lines of python, but after 2 years of hacking your java app can easly be 10x the size of a python app.
Reminds me when steve yegge was comparing languages, he complained about not being able to just type "quit" or "exit" in the python shell, unlike ruby. Focusing on the trivialities really doesn't help other then make the author feel smart like they have reviewed a langugae.
(BTW, you should try getting out of the haskell ghci shell, man, that thing just doesn't want me to quit).
Programming drains you in innumerable nickel and dime increments. Each tidbit that you "just have to know" is a tiny bit of cognitive load you have to tow. This not only applies to languages, but libraries.
A few trivialities are meaningless. Thousands of trivialities will drain you, and a few of those will slip through and become bugs.
in pythons case its consistency, not lack of polish. If you try to do "exit" now, it tells you to either call exit() function (thats new), or ctrl-D/EOF to quit. Now it can't be lack of polish as it knows what you are trying to do, its just it is catering for the larger picture which is to educate you on how the interpreter works.
