Python demo
Expect to hear a lot more about this powerful general-purpose language in the future - for Python is likely to become the language of choice for mobile devices.
Formerly rather obscure, Python has recently hit the mainstream news as mobile phone manufacturers have adopted it as their language of choice for the next generation of mobile phones, which will be user-programmable in this easy-to-learn language.But, although it may seem like the new kid on the block, Python has been around since 1990, when it was created by Guido Van Rossum who worked on the teaching language ABC. Because of its educational origins, it is an easy computer language to get started in and may perhaps be a worthy successor to the sadly underused Pascal.
A snake on the ladder
However, Python is not a 'toy language', but is fully featured, and valuable both as a stand-alone interpreter on desktop PCs for everyday number-crunching - and as a web functionality language. Our standard functionality example, which you can test by using the form below, incorporates full mysql database support.
Best of all, Python is freely available as open source from python.org. Even on a standard desktop, the interpreter is easy to install and easy to start learning and, provided the interpreter is running, whole Windows applications can be built in the language. As such, it harkens back to the glory days of microcomputing, when every machine automatically came with a language interpreter of some sort.
It is also highly extensible, and developers have been adding and distributing their own code libraries to it for some while. Our web example makes use of two such extension libraries.
With its mobile-phone deployment pending, perhaps as early as 2005, perhaps a whole new generation of programmers will be persuaded to ride the snake...
Python links:
Python.org
