Python in game development?

[Martijn Faassen]

In comp.lang.python slaurijssen <serve at circe.dem.nl> wrote:
> How about learning the language and the library? (if it has a library)
> Does it take much time or is it relatively easy etc.

Python the language is one of the easiest languages I've learned yet.
The library takes more time, but you can take that one step at the
time, and the Python library reference is good.

If you're talking about learning SDL or PySDL that may be more involved,
but that's not really python related; it's game programming related.

> I am interested in learning it, but only if it doesn't take too much time
> and if it has other benefits (I can look up the "other benefits" on the net)
[snip]

It'd say it'll take the average programmer way less time to get productive
with Python than with C++, Java, C or Perl, for instance.

One of the most important other benefits of Python (besides easy to learn) is
that it's hard to code yourself into a corner. Python is very flexible,
and you usually make it do what you want without too much hassle.

Main disadvantage of Python in game programming would be that it's a lot
slower than C++ and C. Though as always this also depends on the algorithms
used -- it's easier and quicker to implement smart algorithms in Python. 
And by offloading the most intensive parts of your code (usually this is
only a small percentage of the total code) into C or C++ (such as the PySDL
library does by offloading to the C-based SDL library) you can also 
do a lot to counter a slowdown.

Regards,

Martijn
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