extreme newbie

[Harlin Seritt]

On 2005-06-18, cpunerd4 <cpune... at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I've guessed that python is purely an interpreted language unless its
>> compiled into another language (ie. it needs python installed in order
>> to run programs). Is this correct?


>It's just like Java.  It's compiled into bytecode and then the
>bytecode is executed on a virtual machine.

So true. Am I the only one who wonders this: If Python at runtime runs
very much like Java and has generally about the same speed (or faster),
then why in the world isn't Java becoming more archaic and being
steadily replaced by Python? I ask this not as a rhetorical question,
but --really-- how come developers are still stuck on Java when Python
seems to be a far better language? In context, Python is not a low
level compiled language like C/C++ is but an interpreted one just like
Java.

Bruce Eckel even marvels at the concise syntax of Python:

"In Python, I can process each line in a file by saying:

for line in file("FileName.txt"):
  # Process line

I didn't have to look that up, or to even think about it, because it's
so natural. I always have to look up the way to open files and read
lines in Java."

If anyone cares to give an intelligence answer to my question, I'll be
happy to take it in without ridicule but I just don't see it. Sorry for
the rant (and somewhat off-topic but I hear you guys are tolerant of
that in this group ;-)), but this is something that has been weighing
on my mind for the last 6 months.

Harlin Seritt