for php, jsp, ruby on rails...they are used to write web application.
so how abt python? i m not sure wt is the role of it...
and ruby? it seems meaningless as RoR comes out...
always confuse to choose which language to learn...
(actually i want to learn Ada:cool: )

How is Ruby meaningless as Ruby on rails comes out? Ruby on rails uses Ruby. Its just a MVC framework for developing web applications in Ruby.

Also any language could be used to write web applications via cgi, but in the case of python there is also mod_python which will allow you to build web applications in much the same way you can with perl + mod_perl and php + mod_php. There are a number of web applications writen in python.

They're different languages... and people have their reasons for using them. Just because it may be easier to do some specific things in one language doesn't mean it's the best for all tasks.

Python (http://www.python.org) is a general purpose, interpreted object oriented programming language. You can use it to create web applications (http://www.zope.org) or customized portals (http://www.plone.org). In addition, Python is a great programming language to use for extending other applications, as it provides features that allow you to write python modules in C, and its core interpreter has been ported to many different platforms.

Not only that, with hooks to various GUI toolkits (such as PyGTK (http://pygtk.org)), you can create great native looking desktop applications with Python.

Originally posted by fyrestrtr
Not only that, with hooks to various GUI toolkits (such as PyGTK (http://pygtk.org)), you can create great native looking desktop applications with Python.

Or better yet, wxPython (http://www.wxpython.org/), which will get you a cross-platform UI using native widgets, using the same code everywhere. To be honest though, hand-coding GUI scaffolding is a major pain, and is to be avoided at all costs. If you don't plan on targetting Windows-only, Glade + PyGTK will get you a decent compromise; you won't have to do the scaffolding by hand, and your code will run anywhere GTK runs, though you'll need to install it on Windows. If you want it to run anywhere with just a Python interpreter though, you'll probably want to go with wxWidgets.

Python is much like Ruby in feature- and mind-set; both take a lot of good ideas from functional programming style, are dynamic, heavily OO languages with capable class frameworks.

On the web front, RoR might be in the spotlight these days, but Python is no less capable; in fact I know of many more large-scale Python web projects that are long standing and have a good rep than I do of Ruby web projects. Zope and Plone come to mind as accepted, large-scale web projects done entirely in Python. Google has been using it for quite a bit lately, including components in GMail and Maps. There are many Python frameworks much like RoR around, such as Django, Turbogears, WebWare, etc.

I'd say it's a useful general purpose language to learn. The syntax is readable yet powerful, and not overly verbose (yes I'm looking at you Java), and it's very fast (to develop in) and easy to use for small- to medium- scale projects in most domains. Ada, not so much :p. If I were going to pick one language to recommend right now, it'd be Python. C# gets second place, if you're looking for another contender, though it's not really too useful on the web yet (without resorting to icky Windows machines for your servers, anyway).

In terms of use, most major online companies use Python in some manner or other. Like I mentioned, its great for writing customized modules (or "hacks" if you like) for existing applications.

Mailman (probably the most popular mailing list software) is a Python application, and there tons of others. BitTorrent is another famous Python application.

A great IDE for Python (and other scripting languages) is Komodo by ActiveState. They have a trial version for Windows, so you might want to give it a try. I believe it comes with a GUI-designer (like Visual Studio) that allows you setup your forms and then writes the underlying code to display your widgets and controls.

A great IDE for Python (and other scripting languages) is Komodo by ActiveState


Do you know of anything good IDEs for python that are freely available?

Try SPE (http://www.stani.be/python/spe/blog/)

Don't confuse between general purpose programming languages and web application frameworks !

PyDev (http://pydev.sourceforge.net/) on Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/) is quite nice.