On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 8:03 PM, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 05/22/10 04:47, Terry Reedy wrote: >> On 5/21/2010 6:21 AM, Deep_Feelings wrote: >>> python is not a new programming language ,it has been there for the >>> last .... 15+ years or so ? right ? >>> >>> however by having a look at this page >>> http://wiki.python.org/moin/Applications >>> i could not see many programs written in python (i will be interested >>> more in COMMERCIAL programs written in python ). and to be honest ,i >> >> There are two kinds of 'commercial' programs. >> 1. The vast majority are proprietary programs kept within a company for >> its own use. As long as these work as intended, they are mostly >> invisible to the outside world. >> 2. Programs sold to anyone who wants them. >> >> Python trades programmer speed for execution speed. If a successful >> Python program is going to be run millions of times, it makes economic >> sense to convert time-hogging parts to (for instance) C. In fact, this >> is a consideration in deciding what functions should be builtin and >> which stdlib modules are written or rewritten in C. >> >> Programs being sold tend to be compared to competitors on speed with >> perhaps more weight than they rationally should. Speed is easier to >> measure than, for instance, lack of bugs. > > doubting python's speed? Look at Mercurial vs. SVN; Mercurial is written > in Python while SVN in C. Mercurial beats SVN in speed by several orders > of magnitude.
Erm, in fairness, I recall hearing that some speed-critical bits of hg are written in C. It does lend credence to the "Python as glue language" argument though; I doubt hg's extensibility and friendly interface would have been as easy to implement it C (particularly the slick instant-server feature). Cheers, Chris -- http://blog.rebertia.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
