Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Lets take my MUA, Evolution, for example. It's not processor > intensive. Why couldn't it be written in Python?
And even processor intensive applications have few critical code paths, which
can be written in some other language thats more appropriate. Python for
instance makes it _very_ easier to call modules written in c, so you write
any performance critical loops in c (in the case of evolution the gtk stuff
is in c, and you just use a python wrapper) and write the overall program and
logic in python. This way you get the best of both worlds, and is my personal
preference for writing general purpose applications (especially gui apps).
You even get the advantages of prototyping stuff in python first, and then
just recode the performance critical pieces in c, even with recoding stuff i
find this method quicker than just assuming as you need high performance you
should use c/c++. As python interperetors improve even cases where you need
to do this will be less and less frequent, especially as more and more high
performance libraries become available and improve.
C and its ilk are, in my opinion becoming less and less appropriate for user
interactive applications in recent years, obviously they are many cases where
C would be the ideal choice of language, but for low latency (in terms of
input/output) applications, there are just Better Ways (tm) of spending
programming time. Im sure many will disagree with this statement, but in my
experience this is very much the case.
Tom
--
^__^ Tom Badran
(oo)\______ Imperial College
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| || Using Debian SID
pgp00000.pgp
Description: signature
