OK, I don't mean to start any sort of war or flaming or anything here but I
really need to discuss this with other afficionados of Python - I know none
other than myself.
I'm a software developer. Where I work, the dominant development language is
Java with some mostly-legacy C/C++ software. In places where I don't need to
directly integrate with our Java suite of apps, the first thing I ask is, "do
you mind if I do that in Python?" in several cases I was given approval after
demonstrating stuff I've already done (These people giving approval are
generally not very technical).
Now, I've also shown my applications (both work related and my own projects) to
other developers at work.
Some of the applications I've written are quite sophisticated. I have software
which uses pymedia to playback media files and Tkinter/Tix apps with quite-good
(infact called "very professional looking" by a few coworkers) GUIs. Apps that
process thousands of records of data in less than a second, and an application
I developed which launches our suite of Java applications (previously
everything needed to be launched by hand with lots of command-line parameters).
Configurations (that specify which apps and which command line parameters) can
be created, edited, deleted, saved and loaded. In addition, once the suite of
applications is running, my application continues to monitor all the processes
(many of which don't have GUIs). The application alerts the user if an app
appears to start taking over memory or %CPU (Our app suite is extremely large
and complex) and allows a user to selectively terminate apps. It's incredibly
useful and I've gotten nothing but complements on the app.
But here's my problem, most of my coworkers, when they see my apps and learn
that they are written in Python ask questions like, "Why would you write that
in a scripting language?" Whenever I hear a comment like that I can feel
myself boiling inside. While many call Python a scripting language, I acutally
use it as a full-fledged programming language. To me a scripting language is
sort of like a shell language where I may process output of one app, feed it
into another, etc. That is, a scripting language (by my definition) pulls apps
together. I don't use python like that (in fact, after my suite launching app
I feel subprocess is very immature). What's so different from python
generating .pyc files and executing them from javac producing .class files
which you then run on java?
I've been in the Python world since version 2.3 final was released, so I don't
know a lot about the history of Python. Was Python originally more like a
scripting language and the "culture" of refering to it as scripting has just
stuck? I would like to see the Python world get away from the "script" term,
perhaps starting in Python 3.x.
Ron
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