Just the interactive shell gives Python a huge up on Java

Jeremy Jones gives a quick comparison of Python with Java and the reasons why he thinks Java developers should consider moving to Python.

Jeremy is a well known writer on Python subjects and he says that “Just the interactive shell gives Python a huge “up” on Java, specifically a shell like IPython. Add the fact that you don’t have to declare everything as some type before you use it and your getting-started productivity is superior in Python. Add to that the ease of iterating through a list of objects in Python as opposed to Java.”

When asked whether he expects developers from other languages to move to Python, he says “Java folks probably have more of a reason to come to Python than Perl folks. Perl folks at least have an alternative language (Ruby) that is easy to transition to that has nice strong OO support. All the languages like Java have the same warts that Java has. But, if they want much of the benefit of Java (the huge libraries available, some of the cool deployment mechanisms such as servlet containers and application servers), Python, specifically Jython, could be really beneficial to them.”

Read the full interview: No programming language offers what Python does philosophically

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