[Tutor] another ?, can Python be learned and used instead of CGI, Perl, and Java/JavaScript or are those still necessary?

[Remco Gerlich]

On Sun, Sep 03, 2000 at 08:37:17PM -0500, Charles Gruschow, Jr. wrote:
> another ?, can Python be learned and used instead of CGI, Perl, and
> Java/JavaScript or are those still necessary?

It depends on what you need to do.

"CGI" is not a programming language, it's a protocol. You could do CGI
with any programming language.

You write "Java/JavaScript", but don't think they are at all alike! Netscape
bought the "JavaScript" name from Sun to hop on the bandwagon with their own
language, but the two have nothing to do with each other otherwise.

Java can be used for many things, and most of those can be done by other
languages as well. The exception is mostly applets; there are things like
a Python applet plugin, but your users won't have it installed; and there
is JPython, which runs on the Java machine so in applets too, but it's even
slower than Java itself and should only be used as a tool, not to write a
whole Java app in, I think. So Java is good for applets, but then, when was
the last time you saw a really useful applet? :-)

JavaScript is usually used inside pages to work in the client's browser,
and it doesn't have a lot of competition there (but I feel a site shouldn't
depend on it, it should work without JS too). For many things JS is used
for, Flash may be a good alternative. Flash is pretty cool (but shuts out
some browsers again). You can't use Python client-side that way.

So, the question if you can stick to Python and do without the other languages
still depends on what you need to do :). 

-- 
Remco Gerlich,  scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl