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romanianusa is offline romanianusa
2009-11-27 , 06:21
Posts: 739 | Thanked: 114 times | Joined on Sep 2009
#11
Originally Posted by rm42 View Post
What do you guys think, do you agree with this?

http://www.themaemo.com/and-now-for-...iller-feature/

Most of the things you say are ...WHO CARE!!!
 
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rm42 is offline rm42
2009-11-27 , 09:18
Posts: 963 | Thanked: 626 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ Connecticut, USA
#12
Originally Posted by romanianusa View Post
Most of the things you say are ...WHO CARE!!!
Obviously a lot of people do since they have been moaning about them on these forums.
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vinc17 is offline vinc17
2009-11-27 , 09:44
Posts: 227 | Thanked: 53 times | Joined on Feb 2008 @ Lyon, France
#13
Originally Posted by rm42 View Post
What do you guys think, do you agree with this?

http://www.themaemo.com/and-now-for-...iller-feature/
Being restricted to one programming language has never been a killer feature, on the contrary. Moreover python is memory-hungry, and this is not a good thing for embedded devices. And finally, different versions are incompatible with each other, so that one can end up having two different versions running at the same time.
 
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PhilE is offline PhilE
2009-11-27 , 10:59
Posts: 71 | Thanked: 65 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Brighton, UK
#14
Originally Posted by vinc17 View Post
Being restricted to one programming language has never been a killer feature, on the contrary. Moreover python is memory-hungry, and this is not a good thing for embedded devices. And finally, different versions are incompatible with each other, so that one can end up having two different versions running at the same time.
I have a meeting to go to in about 6 minutes, so this won't be a lengthy reply. In a nutshell, I've never heard such nonsense in my life.

Nobody said anything about being restricted to a single language.

Python on the Dell laptop I'm using, running Mandriva Linux2009.1, takes up 3.2 megabytes of memory to run the interpreter. Any other memory usage is down to your own code, I'm afraid.

[Edit] 99% of Python scripts that you write will need some additional modules in order to be useful, so I've just tested the following:

$ python
Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Aug 22 2009, 12:28:58)
[GCC 4.3.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import PyQt4
>>> import os
>>> import sys

I think these modules will be the most relevant when developing for the N900. The memory usage in 'top' for my Python session is now showing 9.9 megabytes, which hardly counts as bloatware. Caveat on this is that I've not yet started learning Python/QT, so there may be other modules required.
[/Edit]

The Python developers go to great lengths to ensure backward compatibility between releases - anything which is likely to break is pointed out very clearly in each new release.

If your system has several different versions of Python installed, then maybe you should look at how your package manager is configured....

[Edit]No apologies at all for sounding like a raving Python zealot - I happen to think it's a superb programming language and I'm an active contributor to 2 or 3 Python-based open source projects. So, yes, having Python available on the N900 is one of it's killer features, IMHO
[/Edit]
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Last edited by PhilE; 2009-11-27 at 12:10.
 

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rm42 is offline rm42
2009-11-27 , 21:12
Posts: 963 | Thanked: 626 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ Connecticut, USA
#15
Originally Posted by vinc17 View Post
Being restricted to one programming language has never been a killer feature, on the contrary. Moreover python is memory-hungry, and this is not a good thing for embedded devices. And finally, different versions are incompatible with each other, so that one can end up having two different versions running at the same time.
Sorry for taking too long to reply to this. I have been out all day. Let me just quote a bit of the article to show that you probably did not read it yourself before commenting on it.

The N900 leverages Linux desktop application development platforms.

Instead of the restrictive limits imposed on developers wanting to program for the iPhone or Android, you can use a number of different languages, and more are likely to become available.
As to incompatibilities between releases, I think you are greatly exaggerating the issue. Python has been very consistent with backwards compatibility throughout its history. Only recently, with Python 3.0 has there been a somewhat mayor break in backwards compatibility. Sure, developers have to go through their code and add a few parentheses here and there and make some minor changes, but it is not really a huge break. However, once that is done and code is moved to Python 3.x, it will remain compatible with future iterations for many years to come.

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/01...-python-3.html

Oh, and by the way, Python 2.6 is a transitional version compatible with both code bases. Hopefully Maemo 6 comes with Python 2.6 to help developers make a smooth transition into Python 3.0.
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shadow12 is offline shadow12
2009-11-27 , 22:56
Posts: 102 | Thanked: 22 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#16
Nothing will run as fast as well written C, C++ or even good old assebly. Unfortunately sometimes you want to forgo a bit of speed to develop things quickly. Python is very good at providing this. It is highly intuitive and easy to use. Furthermore you can write functions in C and interface using ctypes for your more demanding methods. The statistical and machine learning algorithms I write are very memory intensive and I would not use Python if I found it inefficient. Yes writting them in C++ would most likely improve performance but would also extend the development time considerably. To wrap it up, Python certainly gets my vote. If we can get 2.6 on the N900 at some point, even better.
 
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rm42 is offline rm42
2009-11-29 , 13:35
Posts: 963 | Thanked: 626 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ Connecticut, USA
#17
Thanks to everyone that promoted the article on twitter. I thought you might like to know that the article has had 4644 visits so far. I find that remarkable.
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vinc17 is offline vinc17
2009-11-30 , 23:31
Posts: 227 | Thanked: 53 times | Joined on Feb 2008 @ Lyon, France
#18
Originally Posted by PhilE View Post
Nobody said anything about being restricted to a single language.
Well, this is what the article suggests. The killer feature would be the possibility to use whatever we want. I also wonder why Perl is left behind (still no libxml2 module for Maemo while it is available on other platforms!!!).

Originally Posted by PhilE View Post
Python on the Dell laptop I'm using, running Mandriva Linux2009.1, takes up 3.2 megabytes of memory to run the interpreter. Any other memory usage is down to your own code, I'm afraid.
Sorry, I meant the disk space (very limited on the N810). I've noticed that it often needs lots of indirect dependencies (e.g. I wonder whether python2.5-numeric is really useful for the advanced status applet, and this was far worse under Debian, where I have more applications, though at least one problem has recently been solved).

I also noticed the my boot was 15-second slower, and python was pointed out as the culprit:
Originally Posted by tso View Post
the boot is slower simply because this is a python app, so the system have to first load the interpreter...
Originally Posted by PhilE View Post
If your system has several different versions of Python installed, then maybe you should look at how your package manager is configured....
This is what happened in Debian in the past, and this was not a configuration problem (a manual removal of old python versions was not possible). This is still a problem with MacPorts, where e.g. linkchecker depends on python25 and getmail on python26. In fact, even in Debian, linkchecker is not compatible with python 2.6 (see the dependencies).
 
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johnnyrockets911 is offline johnnyrockets911
2009-11-30 , 23:33
Posts: 44 | Thanked: 50 times | Joined on Nov 2009
#19
I'm a bit skeptical.

What kinds of things would be possible in Python that haven't already been possible (or have already been done) with the current languages already available? (On Android, iPhone OS, etc)

It might get more people to play around with hacking or developing sure. But that doesn't mean it'll lead to any new huge breakthroughs or anything. Am I missing something here?
 
Gadgety is offline Gadgety
2009-11-30 , 23:43
Posts: 220 | Thanked: 129 times | Joined on Nov 2009
#20
Originally Posted by johnnyrockets911 View Post
I'm a bit skeptical.

What kinds of things would be possible in Python that haven't already been possible (or have already been done) with the current languages already available? (On Android, iPhone OS, etc)

It might get more people to play around with hacking or developing sure. But that doesn't mean it'll lead to any new huge breakthroughs or anything. Am I missing something here?
Creativity?
 
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