Thoughts on Guido's ITC audio interview

[Markus Wankus]

I was forced to use Eclipse recently. Dreadful. I really disliked it. I
never got as far as wanting to refactor things. I couldn't wait to stop
using it.



Total agreement. My point is that productivity gains from refactoring
tools are the least of your worries. Hiring good staff that know how to
write, test and debug software is very much more important than the
amount of time a refactoring tool will save.

Stephen

Well, I have been using it for 2 years now, and while I still prefer
Python "big-time" to Java, I have really grown to love Eclipse. To each
his own I guess.

I agree you shouldn't bank on productivity gains from refactoring tools.
And I agree they are definitely no kind of replacement for good
people. I just think it is silly not to benefit from them.

M.

 

[Stephen Kellett]

just think it is silly not to benefit from them.

In which case you misunderstood me - I never said people should not use
them, just that they should not be relied on for productivity
improvements. They must factor in at a fraction of 1% of productivity. I
don't really class improvements at that level as much to be shouted
about

Stephen

 

[Paul Boddie]

Sounds like it really is converting java classes to python classes,

Yes, it is converting Java classes to Python classes at runtime using
an import hook, in fact.

which are very different things. Lot of limitations mentioned such as:
"It runs on the Python runtime which does not have the security,
threading and just-in-time compiler features that people enjoy about
Java runtimes"

The conversion done by javaclass relies on various limitations around
the Java class model compared to its Python counterpart (eg. single
vs. multiple inheritance), various things where the Python runtime is
a lot less fussy about classes and objects than the Java runtime is
(eg. the various low-level type-specific operations which can each be
mapped to the same Python bytecode), but also upon the similarities
that one would expect between any two mainstream virtual machines.
Python virtual machine instructions are more general than many Java
virtual machine instructions, but providing that the semantics are
preserved this should/does make the hosting of Java code
easier/possible.

Things like security and just-in-time compilation are arguably
orthogonal to replicating the semantics of most Java code, and since
the Python runtime is more conservative about concurrency, threading
becomes more of a performance/latency concern - again, an orthogonal
issue. For the proposal of javaclass and similar schemes as usable
tools, however, I would personally worry more about matching the
exception handling and import semantics of the two language systems -
those being things that have arisen as problems "on the ground".

Paul

 

[Joseph Garvin]

Everyone complaining about Eclipse in this thread needs to go try 3.1.
The interface is much much much more responsive.

Also, everyone keeps discussing Eclipse as something that gives Java a
leg up on Python. *Ahem* PyDev Which you should also give another try
if you haven't in a few versions. Easiest way to get a GUI debugger for
python.

My only misgiving with Eclipse now is that I think development of
plugins for it is always going to be slower than for Emacs and other
editors because they have to be written in Java.

 

[Paul Rubin]

Also, everyone keeps discussing Eclipse as something that gives Java a
leg up on Python. *Ahem* PyDev Which you should also give another
try if you haven't in a few versions. Easiest way to get a GUI
debugger for python.

Can you give a brief description of what the Python debugger is like?
Can it debug multi-threaded Python programs?

IDLE has a rudimentary debugger that can be useful sometimes, but it
wedges up when you exit from it, making its usefulness limited.

My only misgiving with Eclipse now is that I think development of
plugins for it is always going to be slower than for Emacs and other
editors because they have to be written in Java.

I had thought that using the Python debugging interface for required
writing C extensions. There's a mention in the Python cookbook of
some C-only interface needed for cross-thread signalling. What's up
with that?