Is Python suitable for a huge, enterprise size app?

[Delaney, Timothy C (Timothy)]

Ivan Van Laningham wrote:

> What you're going to run into are two major stumbling blocks.  One,
> Python's got no credibility with management types unless the
> credibility's already there.  "Python?  Never heard of it.  Tell me
> about it.  ...   Oh, it's interpreted, is it?  Interesting."  You can
> see Python going down the sewer pipes, right on their faces.  Two,
> security.  "This python sounds pretty interesting.  Tell me about the
> security.  How can we prevent people from stealing our source code,
> which we just spent millions developing?  ...  Hmm, trust the
> developers out there not to peek?  Oh, sure, let's use it."  (True,
> there are ways around the second, but you're going to have to talk
> _very_ fast and have ALL the answers before the management type gets
> to his/her office and shuts the door in your face and on your idea.)

There is a good answer to both of these ... Pyrex (second time I've
recommended it today :)

http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python/Pyrex/

I recently had a situation here at work where a utility written in
Python needed to start going out to customers. The simplest solution was
to use Pyrex to create extension modules from the Python files. With
very minimal changes and an appropriate build script, everything worked.

The disadvantages are that for the Pyrex files you are limited to a
subset of Python features - in particular, things like list
comprehensions, generators, etc don't work. OTOH, it's very easy to put
that type of thing in a Python module and call it from a Pyrex module. A
mixture of Python and Pyrex is about the best of both worlds (esp. if
you add psyco to the mix).

Tim Delaney