Why is python not written in C++ ?

[Paul Rubin]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> writes:
> I believe the life-support software on the International Space Station is 
> written in Ada. Would anybody feel happier if that had been done in C++?

Take a look at the articles on C bug-finding on Dawson Engler's page:

  http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/ 

They are about tools that found 100's of bugs in various large C
programs including Linux and OpenBSD.  Most of those bugs would probably
not have been possible in Ada.  Program bugs are generally either subtle
errors or dumb ones.  Humans always will make dumb errors from time to
time, and C does almost nothing to prevent them (C++ used properly is
somewhat better).  Ada doesn't prevent the subtle ones but appears much
better than C or C++ at preventing the dumb kind.

I'm not sure what the hiring issue is.  I think anyone skilled in C++ or
Java can pick up Ada pretty easily.  It's mostly a subset of C++ with
different surface syntax.