Python Written in C?

[Tim Roberts]

giveitawhril2008 at gmail.com wrote:
>
>I'm just learning about Python now and it sounds interesting. But I
>just read (on the Wiki page) that mainstream Python was written in C.
>That's what I was searching for: Python was written in what other
>language?
>
>See, my concern was something like: OK, if Python is so hot, then,
>hopefully someone is writing it in assembly language for each MPU chip
>out there. ...

No one writes compilers in assembly language.  Most people don't even write
assemblers in assembly language.

>So I was suspecting the Python compiler or interpreter is written in a
>REAL language like C#. So, Wiki says it's written in C! It's almost as
>if it were an intentional trick...write your own, new language in an
>OLD, real world language that is passe.

You seem to believe that, because YOU are just learning about Python, that
necessarily means that Python itself is new.  That is incorrect.  Python
was originally conceived and developed in 1990.  Anders Hejlsberg, who
designed C#, was still at Borland at that time, and had not even created
Delphi yet.  C++ was still many years away from becoming an ISO standard.

>I'm not dissing Python, here. Just noting that, if it is written in C,
>that throws a curve at me in trying to balance the value of learning
>Python vs. some other major language.

I would say you have a very strange criteria for deciding whether a
language is worth learning.
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.