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Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 02:46:41 +1100
Subject: Re: Python Worst Practices
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
Cc: "python-list@python.org" <python-list@python.org>
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On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 2:33 AM, Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> It also makes me wonder what idiot decided to use C as the language for the
> first Python implementation? Or was it written in something else and then
> ported?

Guido, probably. And what other language would you suggest? What other
language has comparably extensive multi-platform support? Writing a
Python implementation in C instantly makes Python available on all
sorts of platforms, with direct access to native libraries on all of
them. For example, CPython on Windows can make use of a whole bunch of
Microsoft's win32 APIs, via the pywin32 extensions; meanwhile, CPython
on Linux can use the inotify functions, again via an extension module
(pyinotify or python-inotify). Jython doesn't offer that, as far as I
know; or rather, Jython offers access to Java classes rather than to C
libraries, and there are a lot more of the latter than the former. Of
all the languages that offer convenient access to the same sorts of
libraries that C code can (generally, those that compile to machine
code and use the same kinds of linker information), which would you
suggest as being better than C?

C may not be perfect, but it's pretty decent at what it does.

ChrisA