[jdev] Python/XMPP GSoC proposal

[Tro]

On Wednesday 26 March 2008, LRN wrote:
> David Janes wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 8:19 AM, Kevin Smith<kevin at kismith.co.uk>  wrote:
> >> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Greg Wilson<gvwilson at cs.utoronto.ca>  
wrote:
> >>   >  There's been a fair bit of discussion in the last couple of
> >>   >   days on the Python SoC mailing list about how useful it would
> >>   >   be to have an XMPP server in Python
> >>
> >>   Why would having one written in Python in particular be useful to you?
> >>
> >>   /K
> >
> > 1) because many of us work in Python environments and would like to
> > continue to do so
> > 2) because Python kicks ass and thus there are many Python programmers
> > and thus once we get the framework in place is likely to be used and
> > extended
> > 3) because this is a noticeable deficiency in Python's otherwise
> > excellent support of Internet protocols
>
> My personal opinion is that Python lacks any unique features especially
> required for XMPP server.
> C/C++ has speed. Erlang has monstrous flexibility, reliability, native
> threading support, and especially tailored for communications. Perl has
> sophisticated string-processing features. Python has none of it. You
> like Python (i like it too), but you can't translate everything to Python.
> It is not for me to tell you for what exactly Python is good, but it is
> not an XMPP Server.
> You could have tried creating XMPP client framework on Python, but
> Twisted done that already.
> That's my IMHO.

Here're some counter-points:
 * C/C++ may have speed, but writing a Python program is probably 20x faster 
than the C/C++ equivalent. Python is really good for prototyping things (i.e. 
XEPs) before you implement them in a faster language.
 * Perl may have sophisticated string-processing features, but it's also 
difficult to read/debug and has a steeper learning curve than Python.
   * the Python community is more welcoming and more active, IMHO.
   * do you need a lot of sophisticated string-processing to do XMPP if you 
have a good XML library?
 * Erlang: how many developers know Erlang when compared to Python?

Cheers,
Dmitri