In technical terms, Python is a high-level, open source programming language that promises rapid development and a low barrier to entry for non-programmers. In other words, it is relatively easy to learn and use -- no small feat for a programming language. But can it crack the enterprise market?

What's in a Name?

Python stands out in many ways, not least because of its unusual name. While many programming languages have dull names like C, FORTRAN or ADA, "Python" is an attention-getter.

Like Linux, Python was first released in 1991. Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, took a different approach to naming his creation. Instead of naming the language after himself, he took the name from legendary comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Twelve years later, Python is going strong. It is a true cross-platform, object-oriented language with implementations on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and many other platforms. In fact, van Rossum, now the director of PythonLabs at Zope Corporation, told NewsFactor that few OSes lack a Python implementation.

"It's been ported to IBM mainframes, and there's a version for the PalmPilot -- Pippy," he said. "I think there's currently no decent version for Windows/CE, Microsoft 's miserable handheld offering, although there was one a few years ago."

Reducing Complexity

Python is an interpreted language, which means developers do not have to compile an application to test it. Also, with some caveats, an application written in Python should run equally well on any platform without much of a problem.

David Ascher, a senior developer at ActiveState, which sells development tools for Python, told NewsFactor that Python applications that do not rely on platform-specific libraries should be quite portable. "Most programs don't need to deal with platform-specific libraries, and work fine," he said. "The biggest issues people face are fairly shallow, like Unix users not thinking that directories can have spaces in them, that sort of thing."

Rossum agreed that most cross-platform issues can be tackled with a little effort. "The usual things differ like filename syntax, process management and GUI toolkits," he explained. "You can do all those things in a Python subset that's purely portable, although you have to make a bit of an effort."

Of course, developers do need to be aware of their limitations. "Some facilities are just not available on all systems," van Rossum noted. "The 'Windows registry' only exists on Windows, and 'fork()' only exists on Unix and Linux, but it's easy to skip code that's not applicable for a particular platform." (continued...)

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