Python 2.0 (perhaps off topic)

[Paul Prescod]

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> I don't think this is a good example.  Even beginning users are going
> to have to learn a little about resource management about some point.
> People should not rely on files getting deallocated and closed by
> Python.  All the beginners who start with JPython are going to get
> Java's GC.  And they're going to need to close the files by hand.

It looks like this conversation has come all of the way around. We are
talking about whether the JVM should be the default, standard Python
distribution platform. It isn't fair, then, to use the flaws in the JVM
version of Python to argue FOR that change.

"Oh well, we'll lose compatibility with PIL but JPython users have
alreadly lost that so I guess it isn't a big deal."

Personally, I wouldn't mind if Python ran on the JVM or had real GC. I
just think that both sides need to be told. Python is the way it is not by
accident but through design decisions intended to keep it simple to use
and embed.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

"Silence," wrote Melville, "is the only Voice of God." The assertion,
like its subject, cuts both ways, negating and affirming, implying both
absence and presence, offering us a choice; it's a line that the Society
of American Atheists could put on its letterhead and the Society of
Friends could silently endorse while waiting to be moved by the spirit
to speak. - Listening for Silence by Mark Slouka, Apr. 1999, Harper's