Is this a true statement?

[David C. Ullrich]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2001 14:38:24 -0400 (EDT), "Steven D. Majewski"
<sdm7g at Virginia.EDU> wrote:

>
>
>On 23 Jun 2001, Carl Fink wrote:
>
>> In article <mailman.993306635.11457.python-list at python.org>, Chris
>> Gonnerman wrote:
>>  
>> > Writing TO a device driver is easy enough... the previous poster
>> > was talking about writing the DRIVER in Python.  No OS I'm aware
>> > of takes device drivers in any languages other than assembler, C,
>> > and/or C++.
>> 
>> He's making a very finicky, nitpicking, and frankly silly point [...] 
>
>I don't think the point was entirely silly!

It wasn't supposed to be a "point" at all. Various explanations have
been given for why you can't write a device driver in Python. I
see why a device driver has to do various things that Python
cannot do, but I don't see why a program that _writes_ a device
driver has to do these things.

Hence the _question_. The point to the question being to try to
learn whether there's an aspect of this that I'm missing.

(Yes, of course it's clear that it's not _practical_ to write
device drivers in Python, like something you could do in an
afternoon in C would take years in Python because the "compilers"
support different things. But I didn't think the question was
about what was easy or a good idea, I thought the question
was about what's possible.)

>It was a valid and interesting point (despite being finicky and
>nitpicking!)

It's not at all clear to me whether the original question was
about what's literally "possible" or what's possible in practical
terms. If the first then it's an inherently nitpicky question.

I'm still not at all clear on what I meant to be asking about.
When we say "write a device driver" here _are_ we talking about
something other than creating a file containing a certain sequence
of bytes or not?

>> Essentially he's deliberately misunderstanding what "write" means,
>> using the "write to a file" meaning instead of "create a new program"
>> meaning.
>
>I just don't think that point had much to do with what the original
>poster wanted to know.

I wouldn't know. Possibly not.

> ( I'ld like to think he just left off the
>smirking smiley at the end for better effect -- it's much funnier
>delivered deadpan! ) 

I'm not sure whether you're wondering whether I or the original
poster omitted a smiley.

>-- Steve Majewski
>
>
>



David C. Ullrich
*********************
"Sometimes you can have access violations all the 
time and the program still works." (Michael Caracena, 
comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc 5/1/01)