White Papers¶
I wrote this white paper soon after discovering Python in 2001. The conclusions are still valid today.
Why I like Python¶
I’ve known for a while that Python was interesting; I attended a Python conference last year and added Python support to Leo. But last week I got that Python is something truly remarkable. I wanted to convert Leo from wxWindows to wxPython, so I began work on c2py, a Python script that would help convert from C++ syntax to Python. While doing so, I had an Aha experience. Python is more than an incremental improvement over Smalltalk or C++ or objective-C; it is “something completely different”. The rest of this post tries to explain this difference.
Clarity¶
What struck me first as I converted C++ code to Python is how much less blah, blah, blah there is in Python. No braces, no stupid semicolons and most importantly, no declarations. No more pointless distinctions between const, char *, char const *, char * and wxString. No more wondering whether a variable should be signed, unsigned, short or long.
Declarations add clutter, declarations are never obviously right and declarations don’t prevent memory allocation tragedies. Declarations also hinder prototyping. In C++, if I change the type of something I must change all related declarations; this can be a huge and dangerous task. With Python, I can change the type of an object without changing the code at all! It’s no accident that Leo’s new log pane was created first in Python.
Functions returning tuples are a “minor” feature with a huge impact on code clarity. No more passing pointers to data, no more defining (and allocating and deallocating) temporary structs to hold multiple values.
Python can’t check declarations because there aren’t any. However, there is a really nifty tool called Pychecker that does many of the checks typically done by compilers. See pychecker for details.
Power¶
Python is much more powerful than C++, not because Python has more features, but because Python needs less features. Some examples:
- Python does everything that the C++ Standard Template Library (STL) does, without any of the blah, blah, blah needed by STL. No fuss, no muss, no code bloat.
- Python’s slicing mechanism is very powerful and applies to any sequence (string, list or tuple). Python’s string library does more with far less functions because slices replace many functions typically found in other string libraries.
- Writing dict = {} creates a dictionary (hash table). Hash tables can contain anything, including lists and other hash tables.
- Python’s special functions, __init__, __del__, __repr__, __cmp__, etc. are an elegant way to handle any special need that might arise.
Safety¶
Before using Python I never fully realized how difficult and dangerous memory allocation is in C++. Try doing:
aList[i:j] = list(aString)
in C. You will write about 20 lines of C code. Any error in this code will create a memory allocation crash or leak.
Python is fundamentally safe. C++ is fundamentally unsafe. When I am using Python I am free from worry and anxiety. When I am using C++ I must be constantly “on guard.” A momentary lapse can create a hard-to-find pointer bug. With Python, almost nothing serious can ever go wrong, so I can work late at night, or after a beer. The Python debugger is always available. If an exception occurs, the debugger/interpreter tells me just what went wrong. I don’t have to plan a debugging strategy! Finally, Python recovers from exceptions, so Leo can keep right on going even after a crash!
Speed¶
Python has almost all the speed of C. Other interpretive environments such as icon and Smalltalk have clarity, power and safety similar to Python. What makes Python unique is its seamless way of making C code look like Python code. Python executes at essentially the speed of C code because most Python modules are written in C. The overhead in calling such modules is negligible. Moreover, if code is too slow, one can always create a C module to do the job.
In fact, Python encourages optimization by moving to higher levels of expression. For example, Leo’s Open command reads an XML file. If this command is too slow I can use Python’s XML parser module. This will speed up Leo while at the same time raising the level of the code.
Conclusions¶
Little of Python is completely new. What stands out is the superb engineering judgment evident in Python’s design. Python is extremely powerful, yet small, simple and elegant. Python allows me to express my intentions clearly and at the highest possible level.
The only hope of making Leo all it can be is to use the best possible tools. I believe Python will allow me to add, at long last, the new features that Leo should have.
Edward K. Ream, October 25, 2001. P.S., September, 2005:
Four years of experience have only added to my admiration for Python. Leo could not possibly be what it is today without Python.
