Janko in a Jar

Not awesome

OK, so why do I think python is nice but not the most awesome language there is.

I can not make in-browser (flash) games with python like I can for example in Haxe (swf).

I can not make cpu intensive games with it like I can for example in Java or Processing (like this). And these games can still run in a browser via applets, even with openGL if you are lucky.

I can use wxPython to make desktop apps, positive is that they have native GUI, negative is that I have to program in a dirty low level of a c++ to do it. You even look at c++ wxWidgets API docs to program python (at least few years back you did). Swing (yes from “horrible clumsy Java” that gets compared to py a lot) is the most advanced and elegant GUI thing I have ever seen for example. So at the end, I don’t want to use python to do GUI apps.

Python as a language is nice, but I would like something like OCaml with some added elegance 150x more, I want more FP power, I want revolutionary progressive/aggressive languages… like Lua, OCaml, Factor and Haxe/nekoML/neko-vm or clojure.. Guido guides python on too safe paths IMHO..

OKeyish

I will probably use python for not cpu intense casual games via pycap. Rabbyt and pyglet are also cool but only for non casual games (no DX) where I usually have different needs for cpu or if I don’t I do them in haxe to get flash deployment option too.

Python has a very nice set of 3d engines (Panda3d, pythonOgre, irrlich binding…) and if I was making something 3d and light on the cpu I could use it. ( Well, a big competitor for this use case for me is Luxinia with lua which I played with a lot and like it a lot ) but python still is strong in light 3d.

I might use it for web-apps also. I think there has some very good points compared to scripting relatives (php, ruby, perl..), it’s quite faster and I wouldn’t use Java for web-apps because I have a feeling it imposes to much structure for a web-app. But all these langs would loose my focus immediately if something like OCaml would have a good low level web server base to build upon. Currently my favorite here is Factor but I am in experimental phase with it.

I will write one more post about this.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Just programming.