While Python as a high-level language cannot control the hardware like C and assembly do, I think Guido is urging Pythonists to learn C as a second language to prepare for the software-hardware interaction world?
Letter to a young programmer
31–32 of 32 posts
Re: Letter to a young programmer
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think they aren't getting faster?
Software is slowing down faster than hardware is speeding up. My work desktop takes somewhat over 5 minutes to boot; at 3.4 GHz and 4 cores, 5 minutes equates to almost exactly four trillion operations, which accomplish nothing at all WRT productivity. Of course most of the time is spend waiting for IO rather than actually calculating anything. Years ago, four trillion instructions processed would have accomplished s…
Software is slowing down faster than hardware is speeding up.
Write your own; that's the only way of staying sane. (It's especially atrocious with vertical market applications, of course. Not only does the SW I used to use in the past suck more and more, but it doesn't even keep adding the features I really need.)