Why is python not written in C++ ?

[Paul Rubin]

Albert van der Horst <albert at spenarnc.xs4all.nl> writes:
> We had a similar discussion on comp.lang.forth.

Heh, fancy meeting you here ;-)

> The bottom line is that to implement a programming language
> you want to use a simpler programming language, not a more
> complicated one. 

Nah, gas is written in C, and nobody implements VHDL as logic gates.

> (We went on whether Forth would be a suitable high level assembler
> for Haskell. It would beat C++ -- not C --  for implementing Python,
> that much I'm sure.)

Haskell (or at least certain parts of it) should probably be implemented
in Coq or Agda, which are even higher level than Haskell.

> Undoubtedly C is the right choice to implement Python.

Python has been experimentally implemented in Haskell:

  http://hackage.haskell.org/package/berp-0.0.2

but the most interesting implementation (not yet ready for production,
but a serious ongoing project partly funded by the EU) is written in
Python itself:

   http://codespeak.net/pypy/