Many programming guides recommend to begin scripts with the #! /usr/bin/env shebang in order to to automatically locate the necessary interpreter. For example, for a Python script you would use #! /usr/bin/env python, and then the saying goes, the script would “just work” on any machine with Python installed. The reason for this recommendation is that /usr/bin/env python will search the PATH for a program called python and execute the first one found… and that usually works fine on one’s own machine.
This blog post is going to be a little different to the previous few posts, there will be essentially no mathematics nor code. It is not intended as a how to or instructional post, merely a repository for my current opinions.
Programmers think dynamic languages like Python are easier to use than static ones, but why? I look at uniquely dynamic programming idioms and their static alternatives, identifying a few broad trends that impact language usability.
"In computer science, syntactic sugar is syntax within a programming language that is designed to make things easier to read or to express. It makes the language "sweeter" for human use: things can be expressed more clearly, more concisely, or in an alternative style that some may prefer." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar