Perl is a lot like that also, you can read about some really weird old features like $[ but you never see that in practice, you just write code with variables and functions and so on.

It’s not like that cannot be changed. Look at PHP, which managed to evolve brilliantly over the last decade and gets tons of things right now.

Python 3(000) was an opportunity to fix all the things, so in a sense, the modern Python is less than 20 years old.

Comparing it with PHP is unfair… to PHP. The amount of hard work that the PHP community has done to advance and keep their language relevant is impressive and admirable, and Python is perhaps the most extreme counterexample there is.

The Python community has spent the last 15 years refusing to improve in any meaningful way, or to learn anything from their peers. As someone who used to choose only jobs that would let me work with Python, I’ve gone through every phase of grief, and now just try to forget that it exists.

I can understand that "advanced" python programs may be difficult to understand for beginners (lots of implicit/hidden behaviors, possibility to change basically everything one should expect, etc).

But to _learn_ programming, I really, really don't see how using Haskell would be simpler than Python. Perhaps if you have a specific background (e.g., math), but else python is almost pseudo code already. You'll really have to convince me that a more abstract language is better...

> Racket / Scheme / I dare say even Haskell would just be so much simpler for learners.

I have used all three languages; and you clearly have no idea of the notion of usability of a language. So many things contradict this, let me list them off the top of my head

- Getting a running toolchain working: Prexisting (most OSes bundle a Python interpreter) or a package install away for Python. Scheme / Racket is some odd mix of custom IDEs with Dr. in the name, or someone's 20 page essay on how SLIME is the best thing ever. Haskell gets into odd stuff with ghci, cabal, and stack, and all of them are extremely slow.

- Tutorials: Python has a ton of them, they all get you printing to stdout and calculating things in about 10 minutes. Scheme / Racket typically spends multiple chapters navel-gazing about lists, cons, and such. Haskell is actually better in terms of the Hello World stuff, but ghci v/s ghc bites you again; and no one has a clear idea of which one to use.

- Advanced concepts: Python has mainstream but halfhearted OOP; and things like decorators and metaprogramming. Quickly intelligible if you learned something else like Java or C++. Or if you learned shell scripts you can get quite a bit done with just imperative. Racket/Scheme: 3 chapters in and you're still trying to figure out tail recursion. Haskell: Instead of just doing fun things with take and foldl you're being hit with trivia about typeclasses.

It would help a lot if every single racket/scheme example wasn't entirely made of single character variables.

I've heard of orbs but what is it actually?