CPython vs. Jython/JPython

[D-Man]

Ok,  if viewing python as a glue language, then the 2 different implementations of the interpreter is reasonable.  I was viewing python as a standalone application language.

Thanks for the response.
-D


BTW,  the question wasn't why didn't the same people make both interpreters, but why effort was duplicated in making 2 interpreters

On Mon, 30 Oct 2000 21:32:08 Guido van Rossum wrote:
> You are all wrong. :-)
> 
> The key difference between CPython and JPython is not speed, but
> available extensions.  CPython is useful as a glue language for C/C++
> library code.  There are lots of examples, e.g. NumPy, Tkinter, PIL,
> and so on.  JPython is useful as a glue language for Java library
> code, e.g. Swing, JavaBeans, Jave 2 Enterprise Edition APIs, and so
> on.
> 
> If only CPython existed, linking to Java code would be very
> cumbersome: you'd have to wrap a JVM in a CPython extension and take
> it from there.  If only JPython existed, linking to C/C++ code would
> be impossible (in situations where JNI is not available) or at best
> cumbersome (wrapping C/C++ code in JNI is much more painful than
> writing Python wrappers, because of the JVM's garbage collector).
> 
> It's sometimes possible to use C/C++ code from JPython (e.g. Finn Bock
> did a wrapper for _tkinter) but rarely convenient.  I haven't heard of
> anyone linking to a JVM from CPython.
> 
> Of course, the fact that there are two different implementations means
> that an app that requires the use of both a library written in C/C++
> and one written in Java is out of luck.  Fortunately, most of the
> standard extensions (e.g. regular expressions) are available in both
> CPython and JPython.
> 
> In the rare case where you need two non-standard extensions, you could
> write your program as two communicating processes, one using JPython,
> one using CPython.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> -- 
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>