Python -- (just) a successful experiment?

[Paul Boddie]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> Come on, this is silly, Java is a lot more cumbersome for doing small,
> quick projects, but Python doesn't have the language discipline or the
> library support to do heavyweight projects that Java can.

I'm not necessarily arguing that Python goes all the way up to the
upper echelons of enterprise application development, but there seem to
be a lot of people grabbing the chainsaw in order to snap a twig, and
then justifying that choice by mentioning all the chainsaw vendors by
name.

> There is nothing like JSSE in Python. There is no JDBC replacement unless you
> get a third party module from somewhere.  There is no MQ.

I won't doubt that there are pieces missing, although JDBC is something
of a red herring, given that Python does have a half-decent API
standard for database access and that you still need JDBC drivers (cf.
third party modules) to connect to actual database systems.

What I've argued for all along, in contrast to the endless advocacy of
language microfeatures that save ten seconds of typing in an average
working day, is increased attention to library support for actual
applications and solutions. So I don't disagree with everything you're
saying here. ;-)

[...]

> Python is great for recreational projects and prototyping.  It's not yet mature
> enough for deploying complex, critical applications, though maybe it's getting there
> (PyPy will be an important step).

I'd be interested to hear an amplification of the last statement.

Paul