"CPython"

Roel Schroeven roel at roelschroeven.net
Mon Jun 20 17:47:20 EDT 2022


Paulo da Silva schreef op 20/06/2022 om 21:01:
> Às 18:19 de 20/06/22, Stefan Ram escreveu:
> >    The same personality traits that make people react
> >    to troll postings might make them spread unconfirmed
> >    ideas about the meaning of "C" in "CPython".
> > 
> >    The /core/ of CPython is written in C.
> > 
> >    CPython is the /canonical/ implementation of Python.
> > 
> >    The "C" in "CPython" stands for C.
> > 
> > 
>
> Not so "unconfirmed"!
> Look at this article, I recently read:
> https://www.analyticsinsight.net/cpython-to-step-over-javascript-in-developing-web-applications/
>
> There is a sentence in ther that begins with "CPython, short for Core
> Python, a reference implementation that other Python distributions are
> derived from, ...".

Counterpoint: https://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode/2017/python-core 
says "The reference implementation of Python is CPython, so named 
because it's written in C." Even in the absence of other evidence I'd 
much rather trust a python.org page than a www.analyticsinsight.net page 
on the subject of Python implementations.

But there's more.

Apart from www.analyticsinsight.net I can't find any website that 
mentions "Core Python" as a Python implementation. That's a strong 
indication that www.analyticsinsight.net is wrong on that point. Frankly 
that website seems very low quality in general. In that same article 
they say:

"CPython is a descendant of Pyscript built on Pyodide, a port of 
CPython, or a Python distribution for the browser and Node.js that is 
based on Webassembly and Emscripten."

CPython is definitely not a descendant of Pyscript! Looks like someone 
found something (semi-) interesting and tried to write something 
insightful about it, but without really understanding any of it. Other 
articles don't seem to be any better.

So we have an untrustworthy site that's the only one to claim that 
CPython is short for Core Python, and we have an official site that says 
CPython is so named because it's written in C. Hm, which one to believe?

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