Could Python supplant Java?

[Paul Rubin]

brueckd at tbye.com writes:
> I guess it depends on your definition of 'advantage', but I've found that
> in terms of lines of code 10X is not unrealistic. Unfortunately the only
> true data point I have (the largest direct port of a program I've done
> from one language to another without adding significant functionality) was
> 80K lines of C++ to about 10K lines to Python. That's 8:1, so maybe 10 is
> too high for the general case, but having written similar libraries in C++
> or C or Java and then in Python, that general decrease is code size is
> common.

I don't know how much of that is language dependent.  I've had many
experiences rewriting some old crufty program, ending up with a new
one (in the same language as the old one) that was 4x smaller than the
old one.