Python in the Mozilla world

[Eric S. Johansson]

Steve Howell wrote:
> --- "Eric S. Johansson" <esj at harvee.org> wrote:
> I would not completely give up on the idea of Python
> itself running in the browser, although obviously
> there have been lots of false starts.
> 
> http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/weblog/arch_d7_2007_04_28.shtml#e702

interesting.  Very interesting but I suspect the message is "don't hold your 
breath but don't give up hope."


> Regarding using Python to generate JavaScript, I just
> get nervous any time code generation happens.  While
> JS is not a perfect language, it's tolerably close to
> Python in lots of cases, and if you have a Python back
> end, you can feed it JSON very easily from Python.

personally, that doesn't bother me.  I lived with Cfront to the point where I 
understood the output and was filing bug reports on it.
> 
> To the extent that JS code incorporates lots of
> cross-platform idiosyncracies, I still think the
> strategy there is to dig into JS and learn how to
> encapsulate those within JS itself.

pick a toolkit and live with it.  Most of the reason why I'm looking for a 
JavaScript backend is because well, my hands and speech recognition don't work 
well with JavaScript.  So, if I could just generate JavaScript from Python I 
would be happy.  I especially would be happy if I could create Thunderbird or 
Firefox extensions using Python because the current model is so incomprehensibly 
documented.  What I need to do would take maybe a day if you're distracted but 
to spend some number of weeks learning how to accomplish that day's effort is a 
pretty low return on investment.  I don't see a career in plug-in writing is 
something worth chasing.  Anyway, that's my opinion and I'm living with the 
consequences.  :-)