Why is python not written in C++ ?

[Peter]

On Aug 3, 8:27 am, Paul Rubin <no.em... at nospam.invalid> wrote:
<snip>...
>
> Certain folks in the functional-programming community consider OO to be
> a 1980's or 1990's approach that didn't work out, and that what it was
> really trying to supply was polymorphism.  C++ programs these days
> apparently tend to use template-based generics rather than objects and
> inheritance for that purpose.  
>
> I've never programmed in Ada but I'm intrigued by these articles:
>
>  http://adahome.com/Ammo/cpp2ada.html
>  http://www.adaic.org/whyada/ada-vs-c/cada_art.html
>
> I have the impression that Ada has an undeservedly bad rap because of
> its early implementations and its origins in military bureaucracy.  I'd
> certainly consider it as an alternative to C or C++ if I had to write a
> big program in a traditional procedural language.

I used to work for defence contractors - Ada (IMO :-)) is the very
best OO language for real-time and embedded systems. It scales
fantastically well to large, multi-platform jobs as well. If I had my
way we would use it where I work now (biomedical field) but that isn't
an option - too many folk are brought up on a steady diet of C/C++ and
therefore don't know any better, plus there is a dearth of Ada
compilers for the CPU's that we use here (all embedded work). I have
used fortran, C, C++, some Java, Ada (and Python :-)), if I had my
choice for the type of programming I do here at work, it would
definitely go to Ada by a country mile.

Having said that though, I won't replace Python with it on my desktop
for the type of stuff I do around the fringes of my job (test scripts
etc) and my personal programming :-)

But for anyone who wants to expand their horizons, learning Ada would
be an excellent choice (although like any learning activity, unless
you have a concrete goal in mind you will probably just waste your
time :-)). It is not an easy language to just pick up and run with
because the strong type-checking FORCES you to think about and design
your program very carefully from the very beginning - something that
many programmers find an abhorrence for :-) But I always used to tell
people - by the time I got a program to compile then I figured 99% of
the bugs were already discovered! Try that with C/C++ or almost any
other language you care to name :-)

Peter