Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
Chris Angelico wrote: Heavy computation might be unideal in Python, but if you can grunge it into NumPy operations, that won't be a problem. May take a look to Pythran too, which generate C++ code from (limited subset of) Python code, usable as a Python compiled module or as standalone C++. https://github.com/serge-sans-paille/pythran A+ Laurent. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
In article 52f9b6af$0$11128$c3e8...@news.astraweb.com, Steven D'Aprano st...@pearwood.info wrote: On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 22:40:48 -0600, Tim Daneliuk wrote: On 02/08/2014 05:54 PM, Sam wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? [snip a bunch of good examples] Applications in which you do not want the casual reader to be able to derive the meaning of the source code. That's a bad example. Do you think that the casual reader will be able to understand the meaning of .pyc files? No, but anybody with script-kiddie level sophistication can download a pyc decompiler and get back a pretty good representation of what the source was. Whether I mind shipping my source, or you mind shipping your source isn't really what matters here. What matters is that there *are* people/companies who don't want to expose their source. Perhaps for reasons we don't agree with. For those people, Python is not a good choice. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 1:24 AM, Roy Smith r...@panix.com wrote: Whether I mind shipping my source, or you mind shipping your source isn't really what matters here. What matters is that there *are* people/companies who don't want to expose their source. Perhaps for reasons we don't agree with. For those people, Python is not a good choice. But if it comes to that, there's really nothing that's all that great a choice. After all, a small amount of introspection will identify the external references in something (even C code has that, unless every single call is statically linked; and even then, I've used gdb usefully on other people's optimized binaries), so while someone might not be able to figure out how your code works, they can at least figure out what it's doing, and call on it directly. The only difference between a .pyc file and a binary executable is that the pyc bytecode is written for a virtual machine rather than a physical CPU. It's not a matter of this is good, that is bad, but a spectrum of difficulties - optimized C code with everything statically linked is about as close to one extreme as you'll get without consciously obfuscating your code, and well-commented source is the opposite extreme. A minified source file, a .pyc file, or a dynamically linked .so, all are just someplace along that range. It's just a question of how much time and effort it takes to figure out the internals of the code. Considering that there are big companies spending lots of money devising DRM schemes, and their code often gets decompiled or reverse engineered within a day of release, I'd have to say that even obfuscated code is no real barrier. The *only* way to expose nothing is to publish nothing - which, these days, usually means running your software on a server and distributing a fairly dumb client... a model that MUDs have been using to great effect for decades, and are even today able to be run commercially. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
Asaf Las roeg...@gmail.com writes: btw, Python could be language of choice for embedded systems if small footprint vm could be developed. had seen similar for java having 10-20 KB byte sized interpreter with very limited set of functions. Well, there's the newish Micro python project. Its footprint is apparently about 60 kB at a minimum (Thumb2 code on ARM). Their kickstarter is at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micro-python-python-for-microcontrollers and source at https://github.com/micropython/micropython The kickstarter was for funding development and a small board with ST's Cortex-M4 on it. The source code includes Windows and Unix targets so it's easy to experiment with without a board too. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On 2014-02-09, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote: Heavy computation might be unideal in Python, but if you can grunge it into NumPy operations, that won't be a problem. While one might thing Python is not suitable for heavy number crunching, it actually gets used for that a lot due to the wide variety of hard-core number-crunching libraries[1] available (BLAS, LINPACK, LAPACK, and the sort of thing usually associated with boffins writin FORTRAN programs). If you're interestedin that sort of stuff, check out Scientific Python, SciPy, et al. http://www.scipy.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScientificPython/ https://wiki.python.org/moin/NumericAndScientific For extra geek-points you run them on the Fermilab/CERN Scientific Linux distro: https://www.scientificlinux.org/ You can also get a Python distribution with all the extra geekyness already baked in: https://www.enthought.com/products/epd/ [1] Some of those libraries are in FORTRAN because I guess there are some sorts of numerical hocus-pocus that still writes easier and runs faster in FORTRAN than in C. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! I'm ZIPPY the PINHEAD at and I'm totally committed gmail.comto the festive mode. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 06:17:03 +0100, Skybuck Flying wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? Anything that needs to be super reliable. Obvious troll is obvious. Okay, I'll bite. What evidence do you have that programs written in Python are more bug-ridden or less reliable than programs written in other languages? Your own poorly written, buggy software doesn't count as evidence. Hypothetical arguments based on it stands to reason or everybody knows that static-typed compilers catch more bugs don't count either. Let's see some hard, reliable statistics. My experience so far with Python versus Delphi has shown that Python requires way more time to debug than Delphi. I'm sorry to hear that you aren't yet fluent at reading, writing and debugging Python code. While it's true that somebody can write hard-to- debug code in any language, in general Python's ease of us, dynamic but not too dynamic nature, and powerful introspection makes debugging quite easy. The reason for this is the interpreter versus the compiler. Which interpreter is that? Do you understand that Python has a compiler? There's even a compile built-in function which compiles source code at runtime, ready to run it whenever you like. Delphi's compiler will catch many bugs in branches that have not been executed or tested. Only if you write many bugs. You can't catch bugs that aren't there *wink* But seriously, Delphi's compiler will catch a tiny subset of all possible bugs, namely, those which can be recognised by static type-checking. While that's useful, it doesn't happen for free. The cost is that Delphi, like Pascal, is a lot less flexible, and a lot more tightly constrained by the need to keep the compiler happy. Although Delphi does have type inference, it is apparently quite limited, which means you're writing a lot more boilerplate code declaring types compared to Python. While Python's interpreter will mostly catch bugs in executed and tested branches. Most of the code that has not been executed yet could contain bugs and even syntax/typos/non declared variables and so forth. Deary deary me, you've just exposed yourself as somebody who doesn't actually know much about Python. Non-declared variables? Python doesn't require declarations for variables. Nor can syntax errors hide in code branches that haven't been run. (Well, technically they could, if you use eval or exec.) But for normal code, it is checked for syntax errors during the compilation phase, all at once. Which means that the entire Python program will have to be re-executed from the start to ultimately end up in branches that were not executed the last time. That's certainly true. But the same applies to Delphi. Type errors and syntax errors are only a tiny subset of all the possible errors. You can have off-by-one errors, logic errors, out-of-bounds errors, network errors, database errors, file system errors... Delphi can't check for those at compile time. No matter how clever the programmer or the compiler, code that hasn't been run and tested cannot be trusted to be correct. As Donald Knuth said: Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. This way of debugging will require many many many many many many many many runs of the same Python program before it's somewhat debugged. And if your Delphi code doesn't have just as many many many many many many many many runs, it won't be debugged either. This is time lost in the debugging phase. Having said that... time is gained in the programming phase thanks to it's shortened syntax. However there is more... Python may lack some technical language elements like, call by reference, and perhaps other low level codes, like 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit integers which play a roll with interfacing with hardware. Call by reference is a means to an end, not an end to itself. Apart from that, all those things you say Python may lack, it actually has. Types of software which would not go onto my python list: operating systems, drivers, perhaps also virtual machines and even compilers, python slow execution speed hampers that as well. Agree with the first three. Not so much the last one. Perhaps you have heard of PyPy? It's not just an optimizing Python compiler, but a more general compiler-building tool. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Saturday, February 8, 2014 10:43:47 PM UTC-5, Steven D'Aprano wrote: PyPy can generate code which is comparable to compiled C in speed. Perhaps you mean, if execution speed is the most important thing, using a naive Python interpreter may not be fast enough. Given that the OP seems to be new enough to Python to not know what it is not as good for, my guess is that PyPy may not yet be ready enough to serve some/most of his needs. For example, if he wanted to write a GUI app, AFAIK he is, for now, limited to Tkinter and a constrained section of wxPython, and wxPython is dicey. I tend to see things through a desktop GUI application lens, so maybe this is just my bias. And I hope I am wrong. I am in no way trying to slight the PyPy efforts. Maybe he could somehow write the GUI part with CPython and the speed-critical parts with PyPy but I don't know if that is possible. (Is it?) -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On 02/08/2014 05:54 PM, Sam wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? Anything requiring strict time determinism - interrupt handlers, hard realtime, etc. Embedded software (stuff going into ROM). Virtual memory managers or any other core part of a OS that manipulates hardware. It can be done with a minimal lower language shim to the hardware, but it likely would be slow. Life-critical (life support, weapons control, etc.) unless you're willing to strictly avoid the runtime dynamism of the language. When life and limb are at stake you want a very static language with strong type enforcement and lots of assertion checks. In principle, you can certainly do this in Python, but the language naturally encourages dynamic typing, introspection, and other, similar runtime behaviors. Applications where storage for programs is at a premium such as Atmel and PIC microcontrollers with onboard flash. Applications in which you do not want the casual reader to be able to derive the meaning of the source code. -- Tim Daneliuk tun...@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 3:21 PM, CM cmpyt...@gmail.com wrote: On Saturday, February 8, 2014 10:43:47 PM UTC-5, Steven D'Aprano wrote: PyPy can generate code which is comparable to compiled C in speed. Perhaps you mean, if execution speed is the most important thing, using a naive Python interpreter may not be fast enough. Given that the OP seems to be new enough to Python to not know what it is not as good for, my guess is that PyPy may not yet be ready enough to serve some/most of his needs. For example, if he wanted to write a GUI app, AFAIK he is, for now, limited to Tkinter and a constrained section of wxPython, and wxPython is dicey. I tend to see things through a desktop GUI application lens, so maybe this is just my bias. And I hope I am wrong. I am in no way trying to slight the PyPy efforts. Maybe he could somehow write the GUI part with CPython and the speed-critical parts with PyPy but I don't know if that is possible. (Is it?) More likely, he can write the whole thing in Python, and then run it in CPython. Then see if its speed is good enough. Sometimes good enough means finishes executing in less than 100ms after user interaction. Sometimes it's even more generous. Other times it's can handle at least X requests per second on a single CPU core, where X is defined based on the number of requests that the network can handle. If it meets that requirement, there's no reason to go to any sort of effort to improve performance. And that's how it is for huge HUGE numbers of Python scripts. Of course, if performance _is_ a problem, then the next step is to measure and find out exactly what's the slow bit. It's seldom what you first think of. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 22:40:48 -0600, Tim Daneliuk wrote: On 02/08/2014 05:54 PM, Sam wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? [snip a bunch of good examples] Applications in which you do not want the casual reader to be able to derive the meaning of the source code. That's a bad example. Do you think that the casual reader will be able to understand the meaning of .pyc files? -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On 02/10/2014 11:35 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 22:40:48 -0600, Tim Daneliuk wrote: On 02/08/2014 05:54 PM, Sam wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? [snip a bunch of good examples] Applications in which you do not want the casual reader to be able to derive the meaning of the source code. That's a bad example. Do you think that the casual reader will be able to understand the meaning of .pyc files? Point taken :) -- Tim Daneliuk tun...@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
Le dimanche 9 février 2014 06:17:03 UTC+1, Skybuck Flying a écrit : However there is more... Python may lack some technical language elements like, call by reference, and perhaps other low level codes, like 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit integers which play a roll with interfacing with hardware. Or, pure software, interfacing with the unicode transformation units! jmf -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On 09/02/2014 10:47, wxjmfa...@gmail.com wrote: Le dimanche 9 février 2014 06:17:03 UTC+1, Skybuck Flying a écrit : However there is more... Python may lack some technical language elements like, call by reference, and perhaps other low level codes, like 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit integers which play a roll with interfacing with hardware. Or, pure software, interfacing with the unicode transformation units! jmf You missed this :) -- My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask what you can do for our language. Mark Lawrence --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:54:30 -0800, Sam wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? OS Kernels. Hardware drivers. -- Denis McMahon, denismfmcma...@gmail.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:54 AM, Sam lightai...@gmail.com wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? Device drivers and operating systems. Definitely don't try writing those in pure Python. Anything that provides a C API is usually easier to program in C, so you would want to write a Python-callable glue module. Sometimes you'll find that there's nothing else to do but the module, in which case you've pretty much written your app in C, but often you can write a tiny driver script that calls on your functions - which means you can, later on, write a GUI app that calls on the same functions. But using ctypes for that is pretty messy and tedious. (Note that you might be able to write your glue module using Cython. I've never done this, but that's a sort of half-way mark between Python and C, with most of the code feeling like Python but the facilities being like C. Some day, I must try it.) Projects that are already partly written in some other language, or which should be written to use libraries in another language, usually should be written in that language. Modifying your PHPBB forum should probably be done in PHP, no matter what you think of that language (and who doesn't). Web applications that need to run on cheap web hosts usually need to be written in PHP, too, but Python is available on a good few not-so-cheap hosts, so that might not be a problem. Heavy computation might be unideal in Python, but if you can grunge it into NumPy operations, that won't be a problem. For the rest, Python's probably a fine language. Applications, servers, pretty much anything will work. Have at it! ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
In article a584b0e9-1995-4189-bfac-d0c5ffc08...@googlegroups.com, Sam lightai...@gmail.com wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? If execution speed is the most important thing, Python would be the wrong choice. If you need to get very close to the hardware (such as when writing an operating system), Python would be the wrong choice. If you are writing software for an environment which has a single-language ecosystem (i.e. iOS - Objective C, or Android - Java), Python would be the wrong choice. If, for security/business reasons, shipping only the executable, without the end user having access to your original source, Python would be the wrong language. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 21:53:00 -0500, Roy Smith wrote: In article a584b0e9-1995-4189-bfac-d0c5ffc08...@googlegroups.com, Sam lightai...@gmail.com wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? If execution speed is the most important thing, Python would be the wrong choice. PyPy can generate code which is comparable to compiled C in speed. Perhaps you mean, if execution speed is the most important thing, using a naive Python interpreter may not be fast enough. If you need to get very close to the hardware (such as when writing an operating system), Python would be the wrong choice. If you are writing software for an environment which has a single-language ecosystem (i.e. iOS - Objective C, or Android - Java), Python would be the wrong choice. https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android https://ep2013.europython.eu/conference/talks/developing-android-apps-completely-in-python https://python-for-android.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ http://qpython.com/ If, for security/business reasons, shipping only the executable, without the end user having access to your original source, Python would be the wrong language. Security by obscurity. Nevertheless, although security by obscurity is ineffective[1], Python supports it. You can ship only the .pyc files. For added obscurity, you could put the .pyc files in a .zip file and ship that. For even more obscurity, you could write a custom importer, and then ship your python byte-code hidden in a mp3 or TIFF file. [1] Shipping only compiled executables hasn't made Windows any more secure, prevented viruses and malware from taking advantage of zero-day exploits, or prevented software piracy. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On 02/08/2014 05:11 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:54 AM, Sam lightai...@gmail.com wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? Device drivers and operating systems. Definitely don't try writing those in pure Python. That all depends. Driving a USB device using libusb and Python might just be the ticket to get things up and running quickly. At one time someone wrote a Linux kernel module that allowed you to use Perl to implement some kinds of driver things. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sunday, February 9, 2014 5:43:47 AM UTC+2, Steven D'Aprano wrote: Nevertheless, although security by obscurity is ineffective[1], Python supports it. You can ship only the .pyc files. For added obscurity, you could put the .pyc files in a .zip file and ship that. For even more obscurity, you could write a custom importer, and then ship your python byte-code hidden in a mp3 or TIFF file. There are some code obfuscator for python but i never used them. btw, Python could be language of choice for embedded systems if small footprint vm could be developed. had seen similar for java having 10-20 KB byte sized interpreter with very limited set of functions. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Michael Torrie torr...@gmail.com wrote: On 02/08/2014 05:11 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:54 AM, Sam lightai...@gmail.com wrote: I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? Device drivers and operating systems. Definitely don't try writing those in pure Python. That all depends. Driving a USB device using libusb and Python might just be the ticket to get things up and running quickly. At one time someone wrote a Linux kernel module that allowed you to use Perl to implement some kinds of driver things. That's not the same; libusb is doing the low-level handling for you. That's not the sense of device driver that gets really close to the metal. I'm talking about real-time response to signals, I/O port and interrupt handling, that kind of thing. The device driver will then expose a higher-level API, maybe as a /dev/something openable, and Python can control the device using that. And that's something that Python *is* good at. I wouldn't use Python to write a device driver for an RTL8169 card, but if I have that card in my computer, I will totally use Python to create a network connection and transfer data. I'm just not going to concern myself with the low-level details when I do. :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
I got to know about Python a few months ago and today, I want to develop only using Python because of its code readability. This is not a healthy bias. To play my own devil's advocate, I have a question. What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python? Anything that needs to be super reliable. My experience so far with Python versus Delphi has shown that Python requires way more time to debug than Delphi. The reason for this is the interpreter versus the compiler. Delphi's compiler will catch many bugs in branches that have not been executed or tested. While Python's interpreter will mostly catch bugs in executed and tested branches. Most of the code that has not been executed yet could contain bugs and even syntax/typos/non declared variables and so forth. Which means that the entire Python program will have to be re-executed from the start to ultimately end up in branches that were not executed the last time. This way of debugging will require many many many many many many many many runs of the same Python program before it's somewhat debugged. This is time lost in the debugging phase. Having said that... time is gained in the programming phase thanks to it's shortened syntax. However there is more... Python may lack some technical language elements like, call by reference, and perhaps other low level codes, like 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit integers which play a roll with interfacing with hardware. Types of software which would not go onto my python list: operating systems, drivers, perhaps also virtual machines and even compilers, python slow execution speed hampers that as well. Bye, Skybuck. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: What are the kinds of software that are not advisable to be developed using Python?
On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 4:17 PM, Skybuck Flying windows7i...@dreampc2006.com wrote: Anything that needs to be super reliable. My experience so far with Python versus Delphi has shown that Python requires way more time to debug than Delphi. The reason for this is the interpreter versus the compiler. Delphi's compiler will catch many bugs in branches that have not been executed or tested. While Python's interpreter will mostly catch bugs in executed and tested branches. What this means is that Python forces you to have a good test suite. Yes, that is a cost; but it's nothing to do with compiled vs interpreted. These days, language engines aren't strictly one or the other, they're on a scale. Python will catch syntactic errors at compile time, but will catch most other forms of error at run time... except for the ones that, regardless of the language used, simply result in wrong data. So if you're not testing your code, you can't rely on it, and that's nothing to do with the language. A language with typed variable declarations can catch at compile-time a class of error that Python can't catch until run-time. Yep. But that doesn't actually answer the question: what should Python not be used for. If you need to trust your code, you need to test it. However there is more... Python may lack some technical language elements like, call by reference, and perhaps other low level codes, like 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit integers which play a roll with interfacing with hardware. I've never yet found a desperate need for call-by-reference. In toy examples, the equivalent functionality can be achieved by treating a one-element list as a pointer, and dereferencing it just like you would in C, with [0] at the end. Never needed it in production code, though. But again, this doesn't cut out a class of application, just a style of coding. As to strict-size integers, Python does have a struct module, and ctypes, both of which are designed for interfacing with hardware or low-level APIs. For normal work, you don't need to care about that at all. Types of software which would not go onto my python list: operating systems, drivers, perhaps also virtual machines and even compilers, python slow execution speed hampers that as well. A virtual machine where machine code is executed in Python? Well, depends on how fast you need it to be, but yes, that's quite likely to demand more oomph than your typical Python interpreter can give you. Although you could probably play ancient 8088 games, actually interpreting it all on the fly; on modern hardware, you could probably get up to the speed of those old CPUs. Of course, if you can get most of the work done at a lower level, then it's not that kind of VM, and performance is completely different. Compilers... yes, on big projects, you'd probably want to write the compiler in C. I generally say that C is for writing operating systems and high level languages, and those high level languages are for writing everything else in. But look at PyPy. It's possible to write a Python compiler in Python, which can often out-perform CPython. So it's not so clear-cut :) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
