[Zope-dev] Extending Zope with Eiffel

[R. David Murray]

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Eric Roby wrote:
> I like Python ... but I don't think (as a scripting language) it is up to
> the challenge of an expert system.  A language that I feel is up to the
> challenge is Eiffel (especially in conjunction with ISE EiffelStudio .. an
[...]
> Am I way off base here ?  Or am I wrong about my assessment of Python's
> ability to build an expert system ?

I can't give you any feedback on python's suitability for building
expert systems, but I can say that Python is *not* a scripting
language.  It happens to be very useful for that, but it is a real,
full blown, sophisticated, Object Oriented programming language.
It is, however, primarily an *interpreted* language rather than a
compiled one, though you can optimize around that with the appropriate
use of modules written in C or C glue code calling modules
written in other compiled languages.

If you already have an expert system in Eiffel or some other compiled
language, then taking advantage of Python's facility for acting as
a glue language would make a lot of sense...

--RDM