Python for large projects

[Lothar Scholz]

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote in message news:<7xad28313c.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com>...
> claird at lairds.com (Cameron Laird) writes:
> > You might also have occasion to learn about Pyrex and ... well, I'm
> > in the Trotskyite wing on this question.  It's not just that Python
> > can work for large projects.  I sincerely regard it as an even
> > *better* comparative choice on large projects; C++ and Java, the
> > usual com- petition, show all sorts of blemishes when one scales the
> > size of the project.  Python remains usable, even at the high end.
> 
> I keep hearing this, but I don't see any large (much less very large)
> applications that have been done in Python; Zope is medium sized.
> 
> Suppose you wanted to write any of the following:
> 
> 1) Optimizing C/C++ compiler, like GCC
> 2) Full featured web browser, like MSIE or Mozilla
> 3) Full featured office suite, like MS Office or Open Office or KDE
> 4) Avionics for the space shuttle
> 5) Internals of a large telephone/data switch
> 6) Tax processing software for the IRS
> 7) Operating system kernel (Linux: the next generation)
> 8) Accounting software for a big bank
> 9) Full featured database like Oracle or Postgres
> 10) ... well you get the idea.

2) if the HTML rendering engine (around 40.000 LOC) is written in C
3) if the Display widget for word is written in C (excel,access,pp
would be no problem)
4) here i must say that i don't really know what the system does but i
think i have an idea about it.
6) maybe the best example how python could benefit. I don't know about
your IRS but our german tax system is a huge bunch of conditional
cases, not a data intensive system.
8) for the some reason as 6, of course you maybe must write a special
number datatype in c
9) parts of it: The Postgres query optimizer is written in very slow
interpreted lisp.

So as a summary: Everywhere where the logic is much more important
then data size of the dataset and you have to implement lots of
standarts (like 2) and save error handling (like 4).