[Python-Dev] Examples for PEP 572 (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Wed Jul 4 08:56:55 EDT 2018

On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 03:24:09PM -0700, Chris Barker via Python-Dev wrote:

Over the years I've been using it (most of its life), Python has evolved to become much less of a "scripting" language, and much more of a "systems" language, and this addition is a (pretty significant) step more in that direction.

As I understand it, the most commonly accepted definitions are:

Systems language: low-level languages designed to compile down to efficient machine code, suitable for writing operating systems, device drivers, and code for embedded systems.

Application language: high-level language intended to insulate the programmer from the gory details of memory management, suitable for writing user-space applications.

Scripting language: any interpreted high-level language the speaker doesn't like wink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_programming_language

See also Ousterhout's (false) dichotomy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout's_dichotomy

Python is certainly not a systems language in the sense of C, Ada or Rust. It could be classified as an application language, like Java. And it still remains an awesome glue language for C and Fortran code.

-- Steve

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