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does opensource move faster with python?

Bernhard Herzog herzog at online.de
Tue Feb 29 10:25:44 EST 2000 
"Michal Wallace (sabren)" <sabren at manifestation.com> writes:

> Does opensource move faster with Python?
> 
> I just surfed over to the GnuCash website. I've been waiting quite a
> while for a "real" release.. But it never seems to come.. Same thing
> with Mozilla.... I'm not trying to rag on them.. But I have to wonder:
> would development move any faster using Python to prototype these
> tools? That's the claim I keep hearing about python.. But how come
> more of the free software world isn't using it?
> 
> ARE there projects out there using python as a prototyping language
> with the possible intention of discarding it eventually and rewriting
> in C?

My drawing program Sketch might fit this description although I don't
intend to replace Python with C, only to rewrite some parts in C if the
Python equivalent turns out to be too slow.

Python is much too valuable to throw away. Adding support for user
supplied scripts is a piece of cake, for instance, if almost the entire
application is implemented in Python.

Some parts of Sketch, like e.g. the undo mechanism, would have been a
lot harder to implement in C or even C++; Well, perhaps not conceptually
harder, but they would have taken a lot more (tedious) work to write.

I'm not sure I would have started Sketch if I had to do it in C or C++
and I certainly wouldn't have come nearly as far as I have.

-- 
Bernhard Herzog   | Sketch, a drawing program for Unix
herzog at online.de  | http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
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