Re: [Fwd: Re: [Uuu-devel] languages] -- Why Python
pythonUser_07 wrote: Some quick thoughts. 1- Python is not new relatively speaking. Quite true, good point. 2)- Python is a natural language for learning basic scripting, but can carry you through to object oriented program. 3)- Knowing python, instantly gets you access to jython. I've found jython incredibly helpful in learning java. Finally, jython seems to be the defacto test scripting language for java. Cheers. These last two points kind of diverge from the point, no? What I mean is that we want to present the argument of why Python is the best choice as THE built-in programming language for the revolutionary uuu operating system. Unless Java becomes built-in, the ability to transition from Python to Jython isn't pertinent info when talking about the uuu project. The idea is to have an easily maintainable (hence readable) OS core of functionality built with Python and to support advanced yet clean and simple modules which can run on the OS with support from the ground-up. On the other hand, are you suggesting against Python in favor of Java? - Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [Fwd: Re: [Uuu-devel] languages] -- Why Python
Mike Meyer wrote: Arich Chanachai [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: These last two points kind of diverge from the point, no? What I mean is that we want to present the argument of why Python is the best choice as THE built-in programming language for the revolutionary uuu operating system. A new operating system shouldn't be picking THE built-in programming language. It should instead be providing mechanisms to allow arbitrary programming languages to be used wherever they are required. Tying the users of the OS - or of some application - down to a specific language is a disservice to the developers and users of that OS or application. While Python is an excellent language, and has a nice implementation for embedding/extending applications, it's not necessarily the best choice for all problems. You're be doing much better for your users to allow them to choose the right language for the problem than to dictate the language that has to be used. mike There is no intention to dictate, but instead to provide out-of-the-box, built-into-the-architecture support for a single language or a wide array of languages. For now, this will begin with a single language and the question is merely which one. Python has been chosen, but some would argue that others are a better choice, such as Lisp. In the future, or whenever someone steps up to the plate, support for the CLR will be implemented, thus broadening the array of integrally supported programming languages (i.e IronPython, Boo, and so forth). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: [Fwd: Re: [Uuu-devel] languages] -- Why Python
Mike Meyer wrote: Arich Chanachai [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mike Meyer wrote: Arich Chanachai [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: These last two points kind of diverge from the point, no? What I mean is that we want to present the argument of why Python is the best choice as THE built-in programming language for the revolutionary uuu operating system. A new operating system shouldn't be picking THE built-in programming language. It should instead be providing mechanisms to allow arbitrary programming languages to be used wherever they are required. Tying the users of the OS - or of some application - down to a specific language is a disservice to the developers and users of that OS or application. While Python is an excellent language, and has a nice implementation for embedding/extending applications, it's not necessarily the best choice for all problems. You're be doing much better for your users to allow them to choose the right language for the problem than to dictate the language that has to be used. There is no intention to dictate, but instead to provide out-of-the-box, built-into-the-architecture support for a single language or a wide array of languages. For now, this will begin with a single language and the question is merely which one. Whatever the intentions may be, the *act* is one of dictation. Since the point of the underlying OS is to increase the interconnections between applications (assuming I've found the correct web page and interpreted it correctly), the underlying architecture should be language-neutral. That allows as many applications as possible to play in the environment. I did this with CORBA (see http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/scripting/ ) just to show that Unix can play in this arena as well as various desktop OS's. Plan 9 provides a much better mechanism that allows any programming language that can do file I/O to be used for building interconnections. mike When the CLR is integrated, it will allow a wide array of problem solving choices for uuu users. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Big development in the GUI realm
Robert Kern wrote: Arich Chanachai wrote: I have never seen a commercial license for a library which stated that you did not have to pay the license fee until you have made that much money in sales from the software which you created, in part, from that library. I would be in favor of such a license, but I haven't seen anything of the sort. http://www.fastio.com/licensePlain.html See their license option for shareware developers. I stand corrected. Nevertheless, my point stands as this is rare. In fact, this thread began as a result of Trolltech releasing PyQt for windows with a GPL license option in addition to the commercial one, and you will notice that there is no special *deferment provision for shareware developers *in the specification of commercial license.* *It would be a grand aid to developers if more companies took this noble and perhaps more effective approach (versus the gimme-money-now alternative which is quite dominant). I would argue that such a provision is in the interests of the toolkit/library developer as this would allow fellows to adopt their technology (and eventually pay for this adoption), fellows who otherwise could not. -Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Big development in the GUI realm
Jorge Luiz Godoy Filho wrote: Max M wrote: GPL is not suitable for all kinds of software. It's nice if you are sharing code with others, but if you are developing something like a desktop application that you want to sell for money, using the GPL is a bad idea. If you're earning money, why not pay for the libraries that allowed you to do so? Exactly. But what about those who know how to program but have not a cent of money? I have never seen a commercial license for a library which stated that you did not have to pay the license fee until you have made that much money in sales from the software which you created, in part, from that library. I would be in favor of such a license, but I haven't seen anything of the sort. Be seeing you, Godoy. Be seeing you too, lol. - Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python.org, Website of Satan
Jane wrote: Lucas Raab [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Jane wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] python.org = 194.109.137.226 194 + 109 + 137 + 226 = 666 What is this website with such a demonic name and IP address? What evils are the programmers who use this language up to? Some people have too much time on their hands... Jane Better get some ointment for that burn!! Huh??? Jane You said that people have too much time on their hands, so he suggested ointment to prevent the irritation etc... He was probably also getting at the topic of this thread (hint: Satan = Hell = Fire), so the ointment puts out the burn. Have fun folks! - Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Arich Chanachai wrote: Paul Rubin wrote: Roose [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Lots of bickering and just plain good sport snipped out What I really wonder about is the possibility of integrating Mono with a kernel and building upward (the shell if you will) using IronPython. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
John Roth wrote: jtauber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] My experiment, Cleese, was making progress before I got distracted by other things. I should probably get back to it at some stage. As my ex-wife was fond of saying, I wish you'd have told me it was impossible before I did it. John Roth Is that why she divorced you? You will notice that tauber says he stopped working on Cleese due to distraction not a lack of progress or a notion of impending doom/impossibility. see http://cleese.sourceforge.net/ James Tauber http://jtauber.com/blog/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Roose wrote: It's a difference of degree, but an important difference. I haven't looked at Linux or Windows NT source, but my guess is the assembly used is just small functions for accessing special CPU instructions for atomicity, context switching, and the like. I KNOW they don't have huge amounts of assembly simply because they run on different architectures. But are you really going to write a virtual memory system in Python? Are you going to write a file system, and a task scheduler in Python? Are you going to have people write device drivers in Python? Cleese!! I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would be a poor engineering decision, and the rationale thus far seems to be Python is cool, I like OSes, let's write a whole OS in Python. If that's not the case then let me know what your rationale is. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Paul Rubin wrote: ... OK, then give me an example of Lisp OS that runs on a PC. I would like to install it on my PC tomorrow. Or maybe my Mac. That was your whole point, originally, that since it could be done in Lisp, why not Python? Huh? That's a non-sequitur, nothing prevents you from running Lisp on your PC or Mac. The same issues issues that apply to OS code, also apply to user code. The Lisp machine hardware wasn't needed only to make the OS run fast. The Lisp machine was developed so that people could deploy large user-level applications written in Lisp, and the hardware was there to support those applications. And given such a good Lisp environment, there was no reason to think of writing the OS in anything other than Lisp. In fact, the reason the Lisp machine died off was because general purpose workstation hardware (and later, PC-class hardware) became fast enough to run Lisp applications without needing special purpose CPU's. That same PC hardware speed is what makes it possible to run user applications in Python. So true, there was indeed a contextual reason for special hardware, and the context has since changed (dramatically). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Paul Rubin wrote: Roose [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ... Upon reading back in the thread I see that you mean compiled Lisp, no? I was thinking that there would be a Lisp interpreter in a kernel, which afaik doesn't exist. Yes, compiled Lisp. There are Python compilers too.\ ??? You mean like Pyrex or some such? I wouldn't exactly call these Python compilers, as that kind of obscures some underlying (critical) facts. In any case, as I said before I don't think it is impossible, just a poor engineering decision and I don't see the rationale behind it. I don't see a convincing case against writing an OS even in interpreted Python, though of course I'd want it to be compiled if possible. What do you think OS's do, that Python wouldn't be suitable for? Your examples of task switching and virtual memory are unconvincing. Those just require setting up some suitable tables and then calling a low-level routine to poke some CPU registers. File systems can be more performance intensive, but again, in those, much of the cpu drain can be relegated to low-level routines and the complexity can be handled in Python. Correct. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Paul Rubin wrote: Arich Chanachai [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, compiled Lisp. There are Python compilers too.\ ??? You mean like Pyrex or some such? I wouldn't exactly call these Python compilers, as that kind of obscures some underlying (critical) facts. Also psyco. Directly to machine code how could anyone say this is not compiled Python. I am right with you. On the other hand however, its compilation occurs on-the-fly (JIT) and is no more compiled than Java. There is an argument either way. I have heard of Java OSs in the works and possibly already existing...are these pure Java? And I think Pypy is currently set up to compile Python into Pyrex and then run the Pyrex results through GCC. But of course, who's going to argue that Pyrex produces compiled Python? I expect many would beg to differ, and in fact might like to kiss your toes just for the mere pleasure of contradicting and arguing against any assertion that Pyrex produces compiled Python. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Peter Hansen wrote: Paul Rubin wrote: When Unix was first written, people thought implementing an OS in C was ludicrous. Everyone knew OS's had to be written in assembler. Actually, when Unix was first written that belief was entirely correct, and OSes *did* have to be written in assembler. *nods* That is, pure C did not have the capability to handle all that was required. I recall it taking a good decade before it became *common* to find C compilers with, for example, @interrupt support to let the compiler generate code that properly saved all registers and used RTI instead of RTS (or whatever it might have been called one one's particular flavour of CPU). If my memory serves me, you are entirely correct. Now, once you added a few tiny interrupt handlers, and some context switching (stack manipulation) routines, pretty much everything else *could* be done in C, but that doesn't invalidate the point. *nods* I think it's safe to say that none of pure C, pure Lisp, or pure Python are really capable of being used as the *sole* language to build an operating system. *nods* It's also safe to say that this is a largely irrelevant point. It would probably only be of academic interest to try to do something like that. Any practical attempt would not think more than twice of resorting to a little glue in assembler or in the form of canned byte sequences built by hand and stuck into the appropriate places in memory... -Peter Indeed indeed. Once must remain focused and ask oneself what he/she is attempting to achieve. In all likelihood, a little asm/c/python glue work won't hurt the objective, especially given that doing otherwise would entail a very _low level_ reworking of Python that would take as much and likely more effort and skill than to resort to asm/c when Python falls incapable. One could do a Python-Lisp OS w/ Lisp used for the Python incapable areas, but you would near entirely loose the benefits of Lisp in that respect--- it would have to be so low-level, could you call it Lisp? (A question someone else here posed in this thread.) - Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Paul Rubin wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Hobbs) writes: The problem when using Python instead of C for OS development is that C was *specifically designed* to create an OS, while Python was designed for completely different purposes. If you want to write an OS, it would be wise to use a language that is suited for that purpose. If you dislike C so much and prefer Python so much more, your first step should be to design a Python dialect that is more appropriate for writing OS's. But I thought Python was an all-purpose language. After all, OS's have been written in Lisp before too. Pure Lisp? Or a Lisp/C/Asm combo? Lisp has a compiled flavor by the way. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Paul Rubin wrote: Arich Chanachai [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But I thought Python was an all-purpose language. After all, OS's have been written in Lisp before too. Pure Lisp? Or a Lisp/C/Asm combo? Lisp has a compiled flavor by the way. Compiled flavor? Lisp has been compiled since the 1950's. :-) I was being sarcastic. No, there was no C code on Lisp machines. There was some low-level code at the bottom whose capabilities were such that you could accurately call it asm, but it was Lisp too, just a very restricted form. Fair enough. But of course, there is doubt that the OP would require a compilable version of Python capable of similarly restricted forms, and as far I know, none such version exists. ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: project
jerry wise wrote: Thank you for responding. I have responded to Jeff several times, but he has not sent me anything back. I have read several of the pymedia docs, but truthfully they mean nothing to me because like I said, I have no experience in computer programming. You told me to look at the pymedia docs and subscribe to the list to help solve the .wav to .mp3 problem, but if the 10 files were .mp3 to begin with then all the combinations of the 10 would come out as .mp3s which would solve the space issue and there would be no need for any conversion, right? You will notice a dearth of contributions from me here at this community, and it can be inferred that this is a direct result of my being _extremely_ busy working for a small software engineering company in Boston which works its employees to near death. But nevermind that, I like to help people as much as I can. You are entirely correct: you could manually convert your Wave files to mp3 or ogg or else and then implement and execute an algorithm which spits out each combination in the desired format etc... yes, you could do this. You would need to specify how to name the files and so forth. It is a learning process. First you need to write out all the steps at a level of detail correlating to your level of programming knowledge (you say nil?). Then you can ask us here how to implement the various pieces in Python, given that you have already carefully read the Python documentation on the relevant topics. I will keep responding to your messages, but I imagine I won't be much use to you given my time constraints and your complete inexperience in programming in general. If you have never programmed before, you need to start with the Python beginner's tutorial on the Python website and you need to play with the language and the various aspects of programming so you can do something meaningful (as you intend to do). Best Wishes. - Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
David Brown wrote: Hello. I recently came across a free operating system called Unununium (or something like that) and it was developed in Python and Assembly. Now, I have been looking for a way to make an operating system for a long long time and the only possibilities I could find were C++ and assembly. I don't mind assembly so much if I don't have to use it very often. But C++ is so complicated and errors are pretty much impossible to find in the code for me. So, I was wondering if it would be possible to find a bootloader that loads a python file at startup or something... Is there an example somewhere of a Python OS? Thanks! People don't make Python OSs because it's a serious pain in the Deng-Xiao-ping. J/k, I am half kidding. Go to google groups, and search for Python OS. You will find that this topic has been discussed numerous times. There was another project other than Unununium which was Python based, but it is not being developed any longer and I fail to remember what it was called. So search away, you will find many results! Alternatively you could contact the Unununium folks for help. Note also that there are Java OSs as well (and probably others). But then again, if you don't like C++, you probably won't like Java. They can be very different languages, but in my experience, the reasons why one does not like C++ is usually due to a quality/flaw that can also be found in Java. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Carl Banks wrote: Arich Chanachai wrote: But then again, if you don't like C++, you probably won't like Java. They can be very different languages, but in my experience, the reasons why one does not like C++ is usually due to a quality/flaw that can also be found in Java. Oh, brother. The Zen of Python says that "simple is better than complex" and "complex is better than complicated". Java does pretty well here. C++ didn't even get "complicated is better than convoluted" right. There's are a ton of flaws in C++ not found in Java. I knew this would get blown out of proportion, but I posted nevertheless. I was saying that Java and C++ share flaws (some and perhaps all of which could be perceived as qualities by someone) and that these common flaws are often the reason why people do not like C++ or Java. This is speaking from experience, not statistical evidence. In no way was I saying that both languages were the same or aligned at particular levels of complexity/simplicity. Both have flaws and qualities the other does not. Whether or not C++ has "a ton of flaws" not found in Java or not, this was not my subject of discussion. I was not speaking in quantitative terms as I was referring purely to those flaws which are common to both and coming to a conclusion based on experience with people who do not like C++ or Java. - Arich P.S. All in good fun but I am not your brother. ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Python Operating System???
Roose wrote: What exactly do you mean by an operating system? If you don't want to program in C/C++ then you're going to have a hard time. I don't want to be too discouraging, but with that attitude I doubt you would get very far. Indeed, this is very true. It sounds like you want to make more of an OS shell -- no? You can implement a shell on top of any OS and probably do it in a language like Python. He should just build around a linux core or use OS kit (if he is serious/determined). But if it is going to be a complete OS in pure Python, uh, it won't be! You'll have to do a lot of stuff in C, at the least interface with the hardware. He could use something like O' caml or Oz no? I might be confused, but I understood them to be C/C++ comparable in terms of power and in that they both compile vs. VMs and interpreters (for O' caml this is optional I think). Or what about D? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: project
jerry wise wrote: Please help me out! Your solution seems doable pretty easily, but I have very little experience in this so I need some help. At the very least respond, because I'm getting kind of desperate. Thank you so much. I'm getting kind of desperate, no kidding. Firstly, did you ask Jeff to help you understand the algorithm? Secondly, did you read up on the PyMedia docs? Thirdly, what do you have very little experience in exactly and why are you so desperate? Is this some sort of school project? You need to be able to answer yes to the first two questions if you want my and/or likely anyone else's help. I am very busy, but if you take the necessary preliminary steps, and do the work, there are many /very/ friendly and knowledgeable people here who would likely be willing to help you, given that you are willing to do some work/research yourself and ask good questions. Best regards, Arich -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
