Know of Substantial Apps Written in Python?

[John J. Lee]

On 5 Apr 2001, Grant Griffin wrote:

> In article <mailman.986245212.31720.python-list at python.org>, "Ken says...
> >
> >From: "Grant Griffin" <not.this at seebelow.org>
> >> . . .
> >> The essential trade in using Python is that you give up some run-time
> >> speed to pick up development-time speed--and that's almost always a good
[...]
> >Actually python is a perfectly good choice for applications where run-time
> >speed -is- important, provided that the 2% of the code where significant
> >CPU cycles are actually burnt are written in C or C++.  In many cases this
[...]
> Yes, but are they doing it in "real time"?

You make it sound as if that were the only kind of programming worth
doing! ;-)

> Numeric Python is a wonderful thing (in fact, I've even used it
> myself--you know, to do DSP <wink>), but it's still useful mainly for
> "offline" processing--at least that's the only way I ever use it.
[...]
> And in the real-time/embedded world, you usually can't operate on
> large blocks of data because of memory and/or latency constraints.
[...]

Would it be possible / useful to have some kind of system in which a
simple C program continuously churns through incoming data, with Python
doing whatever higher-level control you are interested in?  I don't have a
feeling for what would be useful in this kind of (real-time / embedded)
application.

But surely your kind of application is the exception rather than the rule,
generally, not just in technical applications, so "Actually python is a
perfectly good choice for applications where run-time speed -is-
important, provided that the 2% of the code where significant" is true
more often than not.  Maybe I'm just ignorant of the amount of embedded /
real time software that gets written.


John