Why is python not written in C++ ?

Tomasz Rola rtomek at ceti.pl
Sun Aug 1 23:04:59 EDT 2010


On Sun, 1 Aug 2010, Albert Hopkins wrote:

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

And one should not forget about performance. C++ was for a long time 
behind C, and even now some parts (like iostreams) should be avoided in 
fast code.

BTW, C++ can be IMHO a bit tricky in situations when one would like to 
call back from JIT-generated code into parts written in C++... I mean 
things like virtual functions, overloading, code generated from templates, 
accessing private members etc. All those issues are non essential from the 
point of interpreting or JIT, yet they stand in a way. While this could be 
solved (with some headache, I suspect), C is far simpler and function 
calls or manipulating structs are actually trivial...

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **



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