[Tutor] origins bootstrapped.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 11:31:59AM -0500, Avi Gross wrote:

> Alan has been involved with Python for a long time so he has more to offer
> historically.

I've been involved with Python for a long time too. What exactly are you 
trying to say?


> Can I ask a question that I really want an opinion on? As a preface, I see
> some think python as a formal language is being pushed by industry in
> directions that may not meld as well for its use in other contexts like for
> teaching students.

I think there is always going to be tension between the needs of 
different users. Beginners need simplicity; expert, experienced 
programmers need power; both have very different ideas of what 
"readable code" means.

I don't think Python is being pushed in any direction by "industry". It 
is evolving according to the needs of the programmers who use it, some 
of whom may work for some industry or another.

> How much of that is due to it being a relative open and
> free product? There are plenty of other applications that you pay for and
> thus have to be responsive to the buyers to remain in business. Python has
> many implementations including some freer than others.

I don't know of any non-free (free as in beer, or free as in speech) 
implementations of Python. Can you elaborate?


> Yet is has gone
> through a bit of a bifurcation and many would like to see 2.X retained and
> others wish everyone should migrate. Is there room for a smaller core
> language that remains good for teaching purposes and that is small enough to
> fit in a Rasberry pi, while other versions are of industrial strength? Do we
> already sort of have some of that?

Standard CPython is light enough to run on fairly low-powered devices, 
including Raspberry Pi. For an even smaller footprint, you can use 
Micropython, which will run on embedded devices, although μPy does make 
some comprompises that means that it's not a fully compliant Python 
implementation.

There are, or were, other small implementations:

- Pippy, Python for Palm (probably unmaintained by now...)
- Python for S60, for the Nokia S60 platform (likewise...)
- Pythonce, for Windows CE (who still uses WinCE?)
- PyMite for embedded devices
- Python-iPod
- Py4A and QPython (Android)
- TinyPy
- PyPad for the iPad
- Pycorn, Python running on bare hardware with no OS


> I was thinking of how many languages and environments have been looking at
> working using parallelism.
[...]
> It definitely is worth doing but does everyone need it especially for
> teaching an intro class?

Who teaches threading and parallelization in introductory classes?




-- 
Steve