Comments on: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective

By: Parag Shah

Parag Shah — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:18:09 +0000

Very nice post.

I agree that the forced indentation in Python will lead to more readable code. I have seen some terribly formatted code in Java, and wished that indentation were forced there too.

However, when working on a team project some people will set their IDE’s to use spaces instead of tabs, and some people might use tabs.

Will that be a problem? Are there any standards regarding indentation in Python?

–
Thanks
Parag

By: Jim Cassidy » Blog Archive » Pythonic DB4O

Jim Cassidy » Blog Archive » Pythonic DB4O — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:37:43 +0000

[...] site stats indicate that few people have paid attention to the articles I posted by Dhananjay Nene. As I continue working with DB4O, I hope you get a chance to read these articles, especially the [...]

By: Jim Cassidy » Blog Archive » Python vs Java

Jim Cassidy » Blog Archive » Python vs Java — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:24:52 +0000

[...] accept this link as my next installment. This writer reflects on the differences between Java and Python, and how he feels more productive using Python. [...]

By: Generation 5 » Nested Sets, PHP, Verb Objects and Noun Objects

Generation 5 » Nested Sets, PHP, Verb Objects and Noun Objects — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:06:31 +0000

[...] Controversy persists to this day about the relative merits of dynamic languages such as PHP and Python versus static languages such as C# and Java. We’re finding more and more that the difference isn’t so much about static or dynamic typing, but more about the cultures of different languages. In this article, I discuss an efficient representations of SQL trees in a database, an algorithm for creating that representation, and a PHP implementation. The PHP implementations uses objects in a way foreign to many developers: rather than using objects to represent nouns (data), it uses a class to represent a verb (an algorithm.) I make the case that programmers shouldn’t feel compelled to create new classes to represent every data item: that verb objects often provide the right level of abstraction for many tasks. [...]

By: Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective - Part 2 - How duck typing influences class design and design principles

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:55:39 +0000

[...] : A few days ago I blogged about Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective. In that post I avoided getting into the specific details with code snippets etc since I wanted to [...]

By: PuneTech » Why Python is better than Java?

PuneTech » Why Python is better than Java? — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:01:29 +0000

[...] Nene recently switched over to Python and has discovered that he is much happier writing programs in Python. He has a detailed post over at this blog on the reasons: I think the most dominant impression from [...]

By: Laurent

Laurent — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:40:29 +0000

Interesting article. But was it a team project? I wish there were more people sharing their experience about an (average) team of java developers doing a project in those dynamically typed languages… IMHO it might be painful.

By: dnene

dnene — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:39:09 +0000

JS,

I concur it is indeed a viable approach and that it is possible that I could
choose to exercise that optiion as well. I think it will indeed depend on
the nature of the application and its distribution model. I would think that
if the application hotspots are fairly localized and if it is intended to be
used in few installations, then using C/C++ indeed becomes a attractive
option.

Dhananjay

By: JS

JS — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:34:40 +0000

Hello,

One neat thing about Python is that if you have performance bottlenecks, you can drop down into C/C++ code to rewrite just those parts of your system that have problems. How come you don't see this approach as viable as simply writing the whole application in Java instead of Python with some parts rewritten in C?

By: dnene

dnene — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:37:08 +0000

Quite interesting indeed. A fair bit of similarities I must confess with code snippets as well.

By: Brian Clapper

Brian Clapper — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:44:42 +0000

Funny... I wrote a similar blog article a couple months ago. See http://brizzled.clapper.org/id/75

It's quite interesting to read others' experiences.

By: sindhu

sindhu — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:48:06 +0000

Am learning Java at College currently, almost done with the intermediate stuff, I've been wanting to learn python since all the web APIs seem to prefer that. I really liked the article I could relate to it, It would be nicer though if you broke them up into paragraphs, kinda hard to read a long chunk of text, I lost track whenever I shifted focus.

By: dnene

dnene — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:06:37 +0000

Yes, I was indeed using CPython.

While I have conducted benchmarks on at least 10 occasions, I haven't kept records of the same. However the one time I did maintain detailed records, I documented these here : http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2008/07/performan... , it includes a benchmark on CPython, Jython and psyco as well. I will stand by my assertion that there is indeed a substantial difference in run time performance on most counts.

An example of tough refactoring is changing the method name in a scenario where the method is being used in a class hierarchy.

By: dnene

dnene — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:51:38 +0000

David,

Nice tutorial and great references as well.

Thanks.
Dhananjay

By: apang

apang — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:04:25 +0000

Exiting to the command line and executing code? How about running an inferior process in emacs and sending the current region? Any language without eval feels like a pain to use for me

By: Dan Fairs

Dan Fairs — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:49:45 +0000

Don't confuse Python-the-language with the Python runtime. I guess you were probably using CPython, which is the (de-facto standard) Python interpreter written in C. You'd probably also be interested in Jython, which will let you compile Python down to Java bytecode. 'Python' isn't necessarily slow; a particular implementation may be.

You don't give any specific examples of where you found CPython to be slow (for some definition of slow), but I'd be interested to see sample code, benchmarks, and perhaps a run on Jython as well.

I spend around 50% of my time in C# (whose tools have similar refactoring capabilities to IDEs such as Eclipse), and the rest in Python. While my development environment for Python (TextMate or emacs) certainly don't have refactoring tools like Visual Studio exposes (and I suspect whatever your chosen Java IDE is also does) I've found that I simply don't need them; a search and replace answers 80% of the common cases. Can you give an example of a refactoring operation that you do with your Java tools that you missed with the Python tools?

It's probably worth mentioning that Python does have high-quality IDEs (Wing springs to mind). These may offer refactoring tools.