I was giving my first lecture in Python Wednesday morning about Python and talking glowingly about Python and implying that other languages like C++ were obtuse. The class started a discussion about “obtuseness” and it really made me think.
A few of the class comments are included below and then my reaction.

On 15-Jan-09, at 12:29 PM, Suzy S wrote:
um…i am way out of my league here…but in our discussion section this morning, i understood from our GSI that an interpreter language like Python is good for writing more simple things that need to run on different machines without changing the source code vs. a compiler language like C++, which is good for writing more complex applications that might need to be written in specific languages for specific machines (and where the source code would not be available)…
is that right? if not, could someone correct me? if yes, could someone give an example?
thanks,
suzy
On Jan 15, 2009, at 1:05 PM, Charlie M wrote:
The lines are getting blurred Suzy, but in general, that’s still correct: certainly nobody’s going to write a quick and dirty text sorter/finder in C++