[BangPypers] Wall street may embrace Python

[Sirtaj Singh Kang]

On 26-Apr-10, at 2:25 PM, Dhananjay Nene wrote:
[snip]
>> I do see one strong plus here for Python. That is a very natural  
>> language
> for expression (as in being one of the most readable programming  
> languages
> for non programmers) without resorting to any specific DSLs etc.

On the contrary, I think treating python as a DSL host (as some are  
implying here) is not such a great idea. In my experience the language  
is not so good at allowing small languages to be embedded without  
resorting to lisp-like nested lists/tuples.  This is not a deal- 
breaker of course, and this decision to use Python is a sensible,  
pragmatic one (lots of python programmers around, financial/ 
statistical libraries are available and mature etc) but IMHO a more  
declarative language would have been nicer from a provability  
standpoint. Being able to write programs that reason about the  
contracts is very important and trying to do it for a general purpose  
language like python will be difficult.

I think over time once smart contract research becomes more mature  
(there are already lots of research papers available) we'll see more  
declarative languages being used for this instead, with python  
becoming the de-facto support language to build tools around them.

Meanwhile, I'll repeat something I say far too much but anyway: domain  
knowledge is just as important as programming chops. Folks who want to  
get in on the ground floor with these kinds of applications of python  
should start learning the vocabulary and process flows of finance ASAP.

-Taj.