Python is being used as much as Java, C++ and Perl

Python and Ruby have been getting a lot of attention of late, so we have been keeping an eye on these technologies.

In this interview, Mark Lutz, a well known name in the Python world says that “Granted, it took Python longer to catch on than Java (which benefited from lots of marketing money). But it definitely hit a critical mass a few years ago, and seems to be doubling in use yearly now. People using Python are promoting Python; it spreads of its own accord. The impact of Google may also be more significant than you seem to imply ”

He adds that “Python is a major programming language today. I see it being used as much as things like Java, C++, and Perl Â

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0 thoughts on “Python is being used as much as Java, C++ and Perl

  • January 15, 2008 at 1:04 am
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    Hi, What is the different between EJB (stateless session bean) and plain java class? Let say we want to use it as a business layer for J2EE application, using ADF faces, and deploy it to a cluster of application server i.e oracle.? ([email protected])

  • March 1, 2006 at 8:09 am
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    The real problem is that tabs are evil and should be avoided (not to start that flame war).

    Since code should be formatted correctly, what’s wrong with taking advantage of that formatted to skip braces, begins, and ends…

    I wish Ruby used the white space convention.

  • January 25, 2006 at 1:09 pm
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    I just started poking about with Python and different IDEs. Whitespace bit me when I pasted sample code that had spaces into an existing file which had tabs. This caused code to run but run incorrectly, all while looking ok to the casual eye. This wouldn’t have been a problem in C++.

    There’s also the eternally annoying how-big-is-a-tab issue, with far too many systems assuming 8 spaces.

  • December 22, 2005 at 11:34 am
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    Python’s significance on whitespace I consider to be assistive, rather than a hurdle. It’s simple: just indent like you would normally indent. Then, what you see is how it’ll run. There’s no ‘inconsistency’ between the indenting and brace nesting. The only two downsides are: 1. mixing tabs and spaces can mess things up. 2. Writing significant ‘one liners’ is a pain (In a program, the solution is ‘dont do that’, but sometimes you want to write a one-liner python script to run from command line parameters).

    Seriously, though, the above two aren’t significant issues, and it REALLY does sound like you’ve not done any serious programming in Python. Try it for your next, say, 5-page project. The whole whitespace thing will become a non-issue.

  • December 21, 2005 at 2:39 am
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    ”’ A beautiful language ( execpt for the white-space … ) ”’
    This is a lame excuse given by people who have not done any serious programming in python.
    In my 3 years of professional programming with Python, this has never been an issue.
    The power and ease of python overshadows the so called `whitespace` issue.

  • December 18, 2005 at 10:53 pm
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    ‘A beautiful language, but perfomance is unfortunately an issue’

    I have seen this every now and then, but if you care to look at the measurements done at http://dada.perl.it/shootout/craps.html you will see that Python is probably the fastest of all the scripting languages around. When it comes to performance it beats both Perl, Tcl, PHP and Ruby.

    It’s of course not as fast as a compiled language, but you will get quite close if you use the Psyco JIT. You can also rewrite the part that is causing the trouble in C/C++.

  • December 16, 2005 at 10:35 am
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    …the global interpreter lock [B]only[/B] comes into play on multiprocessor machines where you have multiple ‘work’ threads running in parallel.

    And the ‘gain,’ at least for me, is a serious reduction in the ‘pain’ of programming in a language as verbose as C, C++, Java, or C#. You can generally get 3-5x times as much done in the same # of lines of code in Python as in Java. Might not mean much for writing code (because the IDE helps a lot), but it means the world for reading it.

  • December 15, 2005 at 9:12 am
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    -. Python can’t do useful threading because of its global interpreter lock. This makes it useful mostly for people who wish to suffer the pain for no real gain.

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