The Designed Philosophy of Python Programming Language
According to Wikipedia, Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. The name Python is said to come from the British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus
Python which is a successor to the ABC programming language was first released in 1991 as python 0.9.0 by Guido Van Rossum who began work on python in the late 1980s. Another version was released in 2000 which was called python 2.0 and was revised eight years later (2008) which was not completely backward-compatible with earlier versions which is known as python 3.0. The last release of python 2 was released in 2020 which is called python 2.7.18.
Python has been generally ranked as one of the most popular and widely-used programming languages and its continually gain widespread use in the machine learning community. It is usually described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.
Python is a multi-paradigm programming language. Object-oriented programming and structured programming are fully supported, and many of their features support functional programming and aspect-oriented programming (including metaprogramming and metaobjects). Many other paradigms are supported via extensions, including design by contract and logic programming. Python is known as a glue language, able to work very well with many other languages with ease of access.
Python uses dynamic typing and a combination of reference counting and a cycle-detecting garbage collector for memory management. It uses dynamic name resolution (late binding), which binds method and variable names during program execution.
Its design offers some support for functional programming in the Lisp tradition. It has filter, mapandreduce functions; list comprehensions, dictionaries, sets, and generator expressions. The standard library has two modules (itertools and functools) that implement functional tools borrowed from Haskell and Standard ML.
Its core philosophy which are the rules of the manifesto is summarized in the Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes aphorisms such as; beautiful is better than ugly, explicit is better than implicit, simple is better than complex, complex is better than complicated, readability counts.
However, it will interest you to know that some of the python features often violate these rules and it has been criticized overtime for its unnecessary inclusion of language bloat. These critics has been responded to by acknowledging that the Zen of Python is a guideline rather than a rule. There has been several controversies has regard the addition of some new features which led to the resignation of Guido van Rossum following vitriol over the addition of the assignment expression operator in Python 3.8.
Instead of incorporating all of its functionality into the core, Python was designed to be highly extensible through the use of modules. This modular approach has made Python particularly popular for adding programmable interfaces to existing applications. Van Rossum's idea of a small core language, complemented by a vast standard library and a highly extensible interpreter, was an influence of his frustrations with ABC, which took the opposite approach.
Python claims to strive for a simpler, less-cluttered syntax and grammar while giving developers a choice in their coding methodology. In contrast to Perl's "there is more than one way to do it" motto, Python embraces a "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it." philosophy. In practice, however, Python provides many ways to achieve the same task. There are, for example, at least three ways to format a string literal, with no certainty as to which one a programmer should use. Alex Martelli, a Fellow at the Python Software Foundation and Python book author, wrote: "To describe something as 'clever' is not considered a compliment in the Python culture.”
Python developers generally aim to avoid premature optimization and tend to reject changes to non-essential parts of the CPython reference implementation that would provide only minimal performance improvements at the cost of clarity. Execution speed can be improved by moving performance-critical functions to extension modules written in languages like C or by using a just-in-time compiler such as PyPy. Cross-compiling to other languages is also possible, but it may not deliver the expected speed increase due to Python’s dynamic nature, or it may only compile a limited subset of Python, potentially altering the semantics.
Python's developers aim for it to be fun to use which is reflected in how its name was coined from a British comedy series. A common neologism in the Python community is pythonic, which has a wide range of meanings related to program style. "Pythonic" code is often characterized by its effective use of Python idioms, fluency in the language, and alignment with Python's minimalist philosophy and focus on readability while code that is hard to understand or resembles a direct translation from another programming language is referred to as unpythonic.
In conclusion, we can agree that Python’s designed philosophy express a deliberate effort to make programming simpler, more spontaneous, and more team-oriented. Through its emphasis on its guidelines summarized in the Zen of Python. Python is arguably one of the most accessible and powerful programming languages in existence. Its conscious design choices will continue to help improve the way developers approach code creation and solve problems while ensuring that Python is every developer go to programming language for web developments and machine learning generally.
The Designed Philosophy of R programming language
R is a leading programming language for statistical computing and data visualization allowing for the easy creation of objects, functions, and packages. It is generally adopted in the fields of data mining, bioinformatics and data analysis. The core R language is augmented by a large number of extension packages, containing reusable code, documentation, and sample data. R is a dialect of S.
S is a programming language developed by John Chambers and others at Bell Telephone Laboratories, which was originally part of AT&T Corp. It was introduced in 1976 as an internal tool for statistical analysis, initially implemented as Fortran libraries. Early versions of S lacked functions for statistical modeling.
In 1988, the system was rewritten in C and began to resemble the version we know today (Version 3 of the language). The book Statistical Models in S by Chambers and Hastie (often referred to as the "white book") documents the statistical analysis features of the language. Version 4 of S was released in 1998, and it is the version still in use today. This version is documented in Programming with Data by John Chambers (the "green book").
Since the early 1990s, the path of the S language has been quite eventful. In 1993, Bell Labs granted StatSci (later known as Insightful Corp.) an exclusive license to develop and sell S. In 2004, Insightful purchased the S language from Lucent for $2 million. In 2006, Alcatel acquired Lucent Technologies, renaming it Alcatel-Lucent.
Insightful marketed its version of S under the name S-PLUS, adding several advanced features, particularly graphical user interfaces (GUIs), hence the “PLUS.” In 2008, Insightful was acquired by TIBCO for $25 million. As of now, TIBCO owns and exclusively develops the S language.
The core functionality of the S language has remained largely unchanged since the publication of the Green Book in 1998. In the same year, S received the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery’s Software System Award.
The R language emerged after S and was influenced by it. One significant limitation of S was that it was only available through the commercial package S-PLUS, which made it less accessible.
In 1995, Martin Mächler made an important contribution by convincing Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman who designed the R language at the university of Auckland to use the GNU General Public License to make R free software. This was critical because it allowed for the source code for the entire R system to be accessible to anyone who wanted to tinker with it (more on free software later).
In 1996, a public mailing list was created (the R-help and R-devel lists), and in 1997, the R Core Group was formed to develop the R language. This group included some individuals previously involved with S and S-PLUS. The core group now controls the R source code and is the only entity authorized to make changes to the main R source tree. In 2000, R version 1.0.0 was officially released to the public.
In addition to its statistical capabilities, R integrates with languages like C and C++, allowing it to interact with various data sources and statistical tools. With a growing user base and increasing demand in the Data Science job market, R has become one of the most sought-after programming languages today. Originally created as an implementation of the S programming language, with influences from Scheme, R has evolved since its inception in 1992, with its first stable beta version released in 2000.
In the early days, one of R's key features was its syntax, which was very similar to S, making it easier for S-PLUS users to transition to R. While the syntax of R closely mirrors that of S, the semantics, though superficially similar, are significantly different. In fact, R is more closely related to Scheme than to the original S language, particularly in terms of how it operates under the hood.
Today, R runs on almost all standard computing platforms and operating systems. Its open-source nature allows anyone to adapt the software to various platforms. R has even been reported to run on modern tablets, phones, PDAs, and game consoles.
One of the strengths of R, shared by many popular open-source projects, is its frequent releases and regular release cycle. This active development ensures that bugs are addressed promptly. While the core developers control the primary source tree for R, many contributors around the world contribute new features, bug fixes, and enhancements to the language.
Another major advantage of R over many other statistical packages (even today) is its advanced graphics capabilities. From the very beginning, R has been able to create "publication-quality" graphics, often outperforming competing packages. This strength continues today, with a wider range of visualization packages available. R's base graphics system offers fine control over nearly every aspect of a plot or graph. Newer graphic systems, such as lattice and ggplot2, enable the creation of complex and sophisticated visualizations for high-dimensional data.
R has preserved the original philosophy of S, offering a language that is not only useful for interactive work but also includes a powerful programming language for developing new tools. This approach allows users, who initially apply existing tools to data, to gradually evolve into developers who create new tools.
Ultimately, a language's success is measured by its ability to provide a platform where many people can create new things. R serves as that platform, with thousands of people worldwide contributing to its development, creating packages, and helping each other use R for various applications. The R-help and R-devel mailing lists have been active for over a decade, and websites like Stack Overflow also see significant participation.
Another key advantage of R over other statistical packages is that it is free software. The R Foundation holds the copyright for R’s primary source code, which is published under the GNU General Public License version 2.0. According to the Free Software Foundation, free software provides four essential freedoms: the freedom to run the program for any purpose (freedom 0), the freedom to study and adapt the program (freedom 1), the freedom to redistribute copies (freedom 2), and the freedom to improve the program and release those improvements for the community’s benefit (freedom 3).
No programming language or statistical analysis system is without its flaws. R has its limitations. For one, it is based on technology that is nearly 50 years old, originating from the original S system developed at Bell Labs. Early versions of R had minimal support for dynamic or 3-D graphics, though this has significantly improved over time.
Another commonly noted limitation of R is that objects generally must be stored in physical memory. This is partly due to the language’s scoping rules, and R tends to use more memory compared to other statistical packages. However, there have been various advancements in both the R core and through packages developed by the community to address these concerns.
At a broader level, one "limitation" of R is that its functionality largely depends on user demand and voluntary contributions. The capabilities of the R system reflect the interests of its user community. As this community has expanded over the past decade, the language's capabilities have similarly grown.
In conclusion, the R programming language comprehensive range of statistical techniques, advanced data visualization capabilities, and extensive package ecosystem make it a preferred choice for data scientists, statisticians, and researchers. As an open-source and platform-independent language, R offers both accessibility and flexibility. Its ability to integrate seamlessly with other programming languages further enhances its versatility. The strong support from its expanding community adds to its value, making R an essential tool in the data science field. By adopting the R programming language, professionals can effectively harness data to drive informed decision-making and foster innovation across a wide range of industries.
The Designed Philosophy of C++ programming language
According to Wikipedia, C++ is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. It was first released in 1985 as an extension of the C programming language, it has since then expanded greatly over time. As of 1997, C++ had evolved to include object-oriented, generic, and functional features, alongside capabilities for low-level memory manipulation, making it suitable for systems such as microcomputers and operating systems like Linux and Windows. Typically implemented as a compiled language, C++ is supported by numerous vendors offering compilers, including the Free Software Foundation, LLVM, Microsoft, Intel, Embarcadero, Oracle, and IBM.
C++ was designed with systems programming, embedded, resource-constrained software, and large-scale systems in mind, emphasizing performance, efficiency, and flexibility. While it excels in these areas, C++ has proven valuable across various contexts, particularly in software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications. Notable uses include desktop applications, video games, servers (such as those for e-commerce, web search, or databases), and performance-critical applications (like telephone switches or space probes).
C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest version, ISO/IEC 14882:2024 (informally known as C++23), ratified and published in October 2024. The language was first standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998 and has since been updated with amendments in the C++03, C++11, C++14, C++17, and C++20 standards. The C++23 standard introduces new features and expands the standard library, superseding previous versions. C++ has followed a three-year release cycle since 2012, with C++26 scheduled as the next standard.
Despite its broad adoption, C++ has faced criticism from some prominent programmers, including Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Joshua Bloch, Ken Thompson, and Donald Knuth.
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All through the history of C++, its development has been guided by a set of principles, often referred to as its design philosophy. These guiding principles are as follows:
The language should be driven by practical problems, with features that are immediately useful in real-world applications.
Every feature should be implementable with a clear and straightforward approach.
Programmers should have the freedom to choose their preferred programming style, and C++ should fully support that style.
Prioritizing the inclusion of useful features is more important than preventing every potential misuse of C++.
C++ should offer mechanisms for organizing programs into distinct, well-defined components and allow for the combination of separately developed parts.
The language should avoid implicit violations of the type system but permit explicit violations, i.e., those intentionally requested by the programmer.
User-defined types should receive the same level of support and performance as built-in types.
Unused features should not adversely affect the performance of the generated executables.
There should be no lower-level language beneath C++ (other than assembly language).
C++ should be designed to work seamlessly alongside other programming languages, rather than creating its own isolated and incompatible environment.
If the programmer's intentions are unclear, the language should allow the programmer to explicitly specify them, providing manual control.
This set of guiding principles has helped shape C++ into the powerful and flexible language it is today, catering to a wide range of programming needs.
In conclusion, C++ has evolved over the decades from a simple extension of the C programming language to a powerful, multi-paradigm tool widely used in a variety of industries. Its design philosophy, focused on practicality, flexibility, and efficiency, has made it indispensable for performance-critical applications, system programming, and software development at scale. Despite facing criticisms over its complexity, C++ remains a cornerstone of modern programming, continually adapting to meet the demands of developers with each new standard. With a robust and expanding ecosystem, along with strong community support, C++ will undoubtedly continue to play a crucial role in shaping the future of computing.
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