[Tutor] I am not really convinced using Python...

[Kent Johnson]

andrew clarke wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 05:14:35PM +0200, Rob Sinclar wrote:
>
>   
>> Yep Python is an interpreted language. In other words every python app needs 
>> the python interpreter to be able to run.
>>     
>
> I'm not sure, but I don't think there's anything particular about the
> language that says it should be interpreted.
>   
Jython compiles Python classes to Java byte code, so I guess it is only 
interpreted because Java is. But there is still overhead to using Jython 
because the generated code implements its own types system, etc, using 
the Jython run-time. I wouldn't be surprised if IronPython does 
something similar.
> As far as I know, programs built with IronPython don't require Python to
> be installed - only the .NET (2.0?) Framework.
>   
No IronPython runtime libraries?
> http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython
>
> You can also build .exe files for Windows using py2exe.
>
> http://www.py2exe.org/
>   
py2exe just bundles all the needed files in a nice double-clickable 
package. It still runs the Python interpreter under the hood.

There are major technical difficulties to compiling Python code to 
something that doesn't need a run-time to make it work. ShedSkin and 
PyPy are two projects that compile a restricted subset of Python to 
native code.

Kent