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Comment by zvrba | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me who has the impression that Python "won" as a glue and application extension language?

Yes, I think it is.

Lua "won" in games, Tcl won in electrical engineering software, Lisp won in various niche places, JavaScript won basically everywhere else.

Python does not seem a very popular glue language outside of Sublime Text.

Quite a few apps on Linux depend on Python as their go-to extensions/plugins language. Here is a small sample

    nearly all the system config GUIs relased by Redhat
    inkscape
    quodlibet
    csound
    ntop
    samba
    ranger
    libreoffice (but this supports a few other languages)

Try to run any modern Linux distro and tell me how far you get without installing Python.

Ugh, tcl. As an EE, I run into it everyday, and despise it. I really haven't given guile much thought, but if the vendors were to drop tcl for guile I would be in heaven.

I understand your pain. Tcl makes JavaScript look good.

I can't say for now but a few years ago python was eating the 3D animation packages embedded language. Blender, Maya, even Houdini. Maya and Houdini had their own scripting language and put python in a first class seat.

It's the scripting language for Blender and Maya as well, in the 3D space.

Errr, what?

Python is the clear winner in the scientific computing space.

That… isn't an "application extension language" use case. I guess if you count wrapping various C and Fortran libraries it's a "glue" language, but that's not exactly what I was getting at.

"Glue code" is not just (or particularly) about "application extension" (e.g. as embedded Lua in game engines).

Traditional "glue" has been called any language that connects between different programs and systems (e.g. take data out of system X as CSV, preprocess them, input them it program Y, do something with the results etc.

Which Python is used for a lot, in the scientific (physics and biology at least) communities. And yes, wrapping C, fortran etc libs too.

It's a popular extension language for molecular visualization applications.

That seems not as glue code, although I agree Python win in preliminary scientific computing.

Is it? A large chunk of all scientific and numeric computing software is written in FORTRAN.

You're thinking hi-end number crunching for mega systems and simulations.

Most low end everyday stuff in scientific and numeric computing is written in Python (including in Python wrapping fortran libs, e.g. through NumPy).

The thread was specifically about usage as a glue and extension language.

I don't know what definition you have for a "glue language" but being a glue language is NOT the same as an "extension" language, nor is it about being embedded (e.g. like Lua inside another program).

From Python.org itself, written by Guido Van Rossum:

Glue It All Together With Python - Python is an advanced scripting language that is being used successfully to glue together large software components. It spans multiple platforms, middleware products, and application domains.

And from Wikipedia, for the traditional definition as I've known for decades:

Glue languages: Scripting is often contrasted with system programming, as in Ousterhout's dichotomy or "programming in the large and programming in the small". In this view, scripting is particularly glue code, connecting software components, and a language specialized for this purpose is a glue language.

Pipelines and shell scripting are archetypal examples of glue languages, and Perl was initially developed to fill this same role. Web development can be considered a use of glue languages, interfacing between a database and web server. But if a substantial amount of logic is written in script, it is better characterized as simply another software component, not "glue".

Glue languages are especially useful for writing and maintaining:

  - custom commands for a command shell;
  - smaller programs than those that are better implemented in a compiled language;
  - "wrapper" programs for executables, like a batch file that moves or manipulates files and does other things with the operating system before or after running an application like a word processor, spreadsheet, data base, assembler, compiler, etc.;
  - scripts that may change;
  - rapid prototypes of a solution eventually implemented in another, usually compiled, language.

Torch7 being rewritten in Python?

Sure, but keep in mind that Guile is also a general-purpose programming language and a virtual machine for running languages beyond Scheme, such as Emacs Lisp. I do web, game, and systems programming with Guile and it does a good job at all of them.

Lua did. Python isn't commonly used in situations where you'd consider embedding Guile.

> Python isn't commonly used in situations where you'd consider embedding Guile.

Which situations would that be?

Shipping it inside a larger application, like in games, as a lightweight script language. Guile and Lua are both purpose-built to be embeddable libraries rather than intended for standalone execution. It's certainly possible to embed Python (anything is possible!) but it's a minority use case and not as well-supported by the tooling.

When you need script language to embed it inside NetBSD kernel

http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lua+4+NetBSD-current

Application configuration. Code is data, data is code.

Multiple interpreters in the same process.

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