Why is python not written in C++ ?

Albert Hopkins marduk at letterboxes.org
Sun Aug 1 22:34:07 EDT 2010


On Mon, 2010-08-02 at 01:08 +0200, candide wrote:
> Python is an object oriented langage (OOL). The Python main 
> implementation is written in pure and "old" C90. Is it for historical 
> reasons?
> 
> C is not an OOL and C++ strongly is. I wonder if it wouldn't be more 
> suitable to implement an OOL with another one.
> 
> Has it ever been planned to rewrite in C++ the historical implementation 
> (of course in an object oriented design) ?

Disclaimer: I am neither a C nor C++ programmer.  In fact I can barely
even program in Python ;-)

I would propose that in fact most programming languages are implemented
in C.  Sun's (Oracle's) Java compiler and runtime are written in ANSI C.
The core of the Gnu Compiler Collection (which includes C++ and
Objective-C compilers) is written in C.  The official Ruby is
implemented in C. The Squeak Smalltalk implementation uses C instead of
C++.  I can't even think of a programming language that is implemented
in C++ (maybe C++ is).

C seems to be a good, portable language for writing interpreters and
compilers.

But I wonder if someone has/has tried to write a programming language in
C++ and what were their experiences.




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