[Python-Dev] 2.4 news reaches interesting places

[John J Lee]

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> At 02:18 PM 12/8/04 -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >I was pleasantly surprised to find a pointer to this article in a news
> >digest that the ACM emails me regularly (ACM TechNews).
> >
> >http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/28026-1.html
> >
> >One thing that bugs me: the article says 3 or 4 times that Python is
> >slow, each time with a refutation ("but it's so flexible", "but it's
> >fast enough") but still, they sure seem to harp on the point. This is
> >a PR issue that Python needs to fight -- any ideas?
> 
> The only thing that will fix the PR issue is to have a Python compiler 
> distributed as part of the language.  It doesn't matter if it doesn't 

I suspect you're correct, but the suggestion elsewhere to bundle py2exe
seems likely to be counterproductive to me: merely emphasizing the
"interpreterness" of Python the moment the idea spreads that Python-built
.exe's are so big because they're just an interpreter plus a script.

I'm sure PyPy, if successful, will be a big win on both PR and technical
fronts.

On a seperate PR issue, I use the word 'script' above advisedly: At work,
I've noticed technical employees of clients who use Java often seem to
take some satisfaction in referring to our web applications (which of
course, consist of who knows how many packages, modules and classes) as
"CGI scripts".  We do use CGI, but the CGI scripts themselves are always
about five lines long and just contain boilerplate code and configuration
to kick off our framework.  You can see them imagining a great long script
named doeverything.cgi...


John