Announcing PyCs, a new Python-like language on .Net

[Mark Hahn]

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like IronPython,
PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features and
probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation
technique. See http://pycs.org.

PyCs is a fusion of Python and C#. It is the first Python-like dynamic
language with all the capabilities of C# including the capabilities of the
research language C-Omega (http://research.microsoft.com/Comega/) including
the X# language features
(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Egmb/Paper...a-xml2003.html) that embed
XML/SQL support directly in the language. At the same time PyCs keeps all
the advantages of the Python language and the Python way.

PyCs will not be source compatible with either C# or Python but code could
be ported from either one easily.

PyCs is being developed by Mark Hahn who developed Prothon and PyCs grew
out of the initial efforts to port Prothon to .Net. For an explanation of
why the Prothon port to .Net turned into a whole new language, see
http://prothon.org/pycsnews.htm.

PyCs is just now starting development and will be developed using the same
XP-like language design process used to develop Prothon. This process will
use the PyCs mailing list to design the language where Mark acts as
moderator and implements the language in real-time as the ideas are worked
out. He will be working on PyCs full-time and drive the development just as
he did with Prothon.

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a
low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the
design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

-- Mark Hahn, http://pycs.org

[Erik Max Francis]

Mark Hahn wrote:

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like
IronPython,
PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features
and
probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation
technique. See http://pycs.org.

Here we go again ...

--
__ Erik Max Francis && ma*@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
\__/ It's soulful music. It doesn't necessarily sound like ... soul ...
-- Sade Adu

[David Pokorny]

WARNING: unfair stab coming.

"Mark Hahn" <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message
news:mailman.2572.1093751093.5135.python- XP-like > low-traffic,
high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the

design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

I'm resisting the urge to compare programming languages to women... or wine.
If we were living about 40 years ago, "ideal societies" a.k.a. hippie
communes might get thrown in this list.

David

[Tom B.]

"Mark Hahn" <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message
news:ma**************************************@pyth on.org...

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like IronPython,
PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features and
probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation
technique. See http://pycs.org.

PyCs is a fusion of Python and C#. It is the first Python-like dynamic
language with all the capabilities of C# including the capabilities of the
research language C-Omega (http://research.microsoft.com/Comega/) including the X# language features
(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Egmb/Paper...a-xml2003.html) that embed
XML/SQL support directly in the language. At the same time PyCs keeps all
the advantages of the Python language and the Python way.

PyCs will not be source compatible with either C# or Python but code could
be ported from either one easily.

PyCs is being developed by Mark Hahn who developed Prothon and PyCs grew
out of the initial efforts to port Prothon to .Net. For an explanation of
why the Prothon port to .Net turned into a whole new language, see
http://prothon.org/pycsnews.htm.

PyCs is just now starting development and will be developed using the same
XP-like language design process used to develop Prothon. This process will
use the PyCs mailing list to design the language where Mark acts as
moderator and implements the language in real-time as the ideas are worked
out. He will be working on PyCs full-time and drive the development just as he did with Prothon.

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a
low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

-- Mark Hahn, http://pycs.org

Python already does all the things that M*soft has tacked on in a kludgy
way, in a beautiful pythonic way. I have been using windows based machines
for a long time and in the language department (as well as others) M*soft
has been superceded by the open source community.

Tom

[Peter Kleiweg]

Tom B. schreef:

"Mark Hahn" <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message
news:ma**************************************@pyth on.org...

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a
low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence

the

design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

-- Mark Hahn, http://pycs.org

Python already does all the things that M*soft has tacked on in a kludgy
way, in a beautiful pythonic way. I have been using windows based machines
for a long time and in the language department (as well as others) M*soft
has been superceded by the open source community.

Is there a real danger that MS will make its own version of
Python, pushing it into the market, and we end up with a
dominant version that only works with MS software?

--
Peter Kleiweg L:NL,af,da,de,en,ia,nds,no,sv,(fr,it) S:NL,de,en,(da,ia)
info: http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/ls.html

The Halloween Documents: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

[Tom B.]

"Peter Kleiweg" <in*************@nl.invalid> wrote in message
news:Pi*************************************@kleig h.nl...

Tom B. schreef:

"Mark Hahn" <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message
news:ma**************************************@pyth on.org...

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to

influence the

design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

-- Mark Hahn, http://pycs.org

Python already does all the things that M*soft has tacked on in a kludgy
way, in a beautiful pythonic way. I have been using windows based machines for a long time and in the language department (as well as others) M*soft has been superceded by the open source community.

Is there a real danger that MS will make its own version of
Python, pushing it into the market, and we end up with a
dominant version that only works with MS software?

--
Peter Kleiweg L:NL,af,da,de,en,ia,nds,no,sv,(fr,it) S:NL,de,en,(da,ia)
info: http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/ls.html

The Halloween Documents: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

What M*soft should do is build libraries like the Speech Development Kit and
Direct X into open source modules for Python. This way they are not trying
to destroy open source but to join with it.

Tom

[Peter Kleiweg]

Tom B. schreef:

Is there a real danger that MS will make its own version of
Python, pushing it into the market, and we end up with a
dominant version that only works with MS software?

--
Peter Kleiweg L:NL,af,da,de,en,ia,nds,no,sv,(fr,it) S:NL,de,en,(da,ia)
info: http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/ls.html

The Halloween Documents: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

What M*soft should do is build libraries like the Speech Development Kit and
Direct X into open source modules for Python. This way they are not trying
to destroy open source but to join with it.

That is not in the interest of MS. Have you read the Halloween Documents?
--
Peter Kleiweg L:NL,af,da,de,en,ia,nds,no,sv,(fr,it) S:NL,de,en,(da,ia)
info: http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/ls.html

[Doug Holton]

Is there a real danger that MS will make its own version of
Python, pushing it into the market, and we end up with a
dominant version that only works with MS software?

No, I don't think so. They already have Visual Basic for that. They
are making their own version of Python (IronPython), but it will work
with .NET or Mono (an open source clone of Microsoft's .NET framework).

And there are two other python-like languages now under development that
will also target Mono as well as .NET: PyCs and boo.

What M*soft should do is build libraries like the Speech Development Kit and
Direct X into open source modules for Python. This way they are not trying
to destroy open source but to join with it.

Yeah, that's the area I see Microsoft stuff still having an advantage,
with libraries like DirectX, text to speech, force feedback, etc. But
you can access Microsoft's libraries from Python, see:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/uncassist
The problem is that then your application will only run on Windows
unless you can get it to work with Wine: http://www.winehq.org/

An advantage of IronPython/PyCs/boo is that they would make accessing
libraries like DirectX much much easier. You'll be able to access them
the same way you would from Visual Basic or C#. But a more
cross-platform compatible way would be to use OpenGL (pyopengl or csgl
if you are using .net) or SDL (pygame or sdl.net) instead of DirectX.

[Brian Almond]

Erik Max Francis <ma*@alcyone.com> wrote in message news:<41***************@alcyone.com>...

Mark Hahn wrote:

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like
IronPython,
PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features
and
probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation
technique. See http://pycs.org.

Here we go again ...

Is it time for an "intervention" yet? :)

Still, I'm curious to see where this goes, although I hope this
project doesn't generate a large amount of OT threads on c.l.py.

[David M. Wilson]

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message news:<ma**************************************@pyt hon.org>...

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a
low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the
design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

Hi there. What are you trying to achieve? You have yet to complete
Prothon or even stabilise it for long enough to let me get a good
overview of it. Might I suggest you take a step back and actually
think about what you are doing rather than just implementing whatever
happens to be considered cool today.

Also judging by what I've seen of Prothon and read here, neither of
your proposed languages are either Python-like or related to this
group.

Might I suggest you sit down with a paper and a pen and work out what
problem you are actually trying to solve, it is starting to get rather
embarrassing to watch the antics here. At the very least could you
spell check your postings before sending them.

There are also much better forums to discuss language development on
than comp.lang.python. Sorry for the flame, but you really need it.
David.

[Steve Holden]

David M. Wilson wrote:

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message news:<ma**************************************@pyt hon.org>...

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a
low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the
design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.

Hi there. What are you trying to achieve? You have yet to complete
Prothon or even stabilise it for long enough to let me get a good
overview of it. Might I suggest you take a step back and actually
think about what you are doing rather than just implementing whatever
happens to be considered cool today.

Hear, hear.
Also judging by what I've seen of Prothon and read here, neither of
your proposed languages are either Python-like or related to this
group.
Well, I guess you have to try and garner support wherever you can.
Might I suggest you sit down with a paper and a pen and work out what
problem you are actually trying to solve, it is starting to get rather
embarrassing to watch the antics here. At the very least could you
spell check your postings before sending them.
Yup. One could take an announcement like this from someone like, say.
Jim Hugunin, who has a solid history of development of complete, working
systems. The suggestion that this effort might lead to something that
was "better" that Iron Python is ridiculous given that Prothon appears
to be merely "sound and fury, signifying nothing".
There are also much better forums to discuss language development on
than comp.lang.python. Sorry for the flame, but you really need it.

It could have been a much worse flame and still justified. Mark should
gratefully take your advice.

regards
Steve

[Peter Hansen]

Mark Hahn wrote:

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees").

Reacting merely to the name, I'd say this smells "fishy". ;-)

(Non-English speakers, please note the winky and consider
homonyms with a sign of the Zodiac before saying I'm being rude.)

-Peter

[Ville Vainio]

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Holden <sh*****@holdenweb.com> writes:

than comp.lang.python. Sorry for the flame, but you really need it.

Steve> It could have been a much worse flame and still
Steve> justified. Mark should gratefully take your advice.

I dunno - Mark's general tone has been rather constructive, which is
not really flameworthy. It might be more useful if he, say, integrated
static typing from Boo to IronPython, but if someone is
enthusiastically (gotta admire Mark's energy) hacking on something
(anything) related to *Python codebase it can still be of interest to
people here - and it can also improve the codebase in the process.

--
Ville Vainio http://tinyurl.com/2prnb

[Mark Hahn]

On 29 Aug 2004 22:32:17 -0700, David M. Wilson wrote:

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message news:<ma**************************************@pyt hon.org>...

Please join the PyCs team. The only effort involved is particpating in a
low-traffic, high-content, mailing list. You will be able to influence the
design of the latest and greatest dynamic language.
Hi there. What are you trying to achieve? You have yet to complete
Prothon or even stabilise it for long enough to let me get a good
overview of it.

Their is a quite good tutorial that you could get an overview quite easily
from.
Might I suggest you take a step back and actually
think about what you are doing rather than just implementing whatever
happens to be considered cool today.
Did you actually read the news release explaining this action? Please get
the facts before judging.
Also judging by what I've seen of Prothon and read here, neither of
your proposed languages are either Python-like or related to this
group.
Tim Peters and Guido both disagree with you. They have both told me to
post here and keep the community informed of my work. They consider
Prothon a "sandbox" that Python can learn from.
Might I suggest you sit down with a paper and a pen and work out what
problem you are actually trying to solve, it is starting to get rather
embarrassing to watch the antics here. At the very least could you
spell check your postings before sending them.
I'm sorry, how did I embarrass you and what did I misspell?
There are also much better forums to discuss language development on
than comp.lang.python.
Prothon and PyCs are discussed heavily on other forums. Dicussion here is
rare.
Sorry for the flame, but you really need it.

Exactly what are you accomplishing with this flame? It seems to me that
you are just showing your ignorance about Prothon and it's relationship to
the Python community.

[Mark Hahn]

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 07:01:20 -0700, Tom B. wrote:

Python already does all the things that M*soft has tacked on in a kludgy
way, in a beautiful pythonic way. I have been using windows based machines
for a long time and in the language department (as well as others) M*soft
has been superceded by the open source community.

I would have agreed with you before I saw the details of the C-Omega
language. Check out this paper on how XML and SQL are handled directly in
the language:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Egmb/Paper...a-xml2003.html.

These features in a Python-like language will be awesome!

[Mark Hahn]

On 29 Aug 2004 19:58:53 -0700, Brian Almond wrote:

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like
IronPython,
PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features
and
probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation
technique. See http://pycs.org.

Here we go again ...

Is it time for an "intervention" yet? :)

So you think I need a 12-step program for my language addiction? :-)

[Paul Rubin]

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes:

I would have agreed with you before I saw the details of the C-Omega
language. Check out this paper on how XML and SQL are handled directly in
the language:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Egmb/Paper...a-xml2003.html.

Yuck, Javascript handled those tasks just fine, it seemed to me.

[Mark Hahn]

On 01 Sep 2004 00:47:40 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes:

I would have agreed with you before I saw the details of the C-Omega
language. Check out this paper on how XML and SQL are handled directly in
the language:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Egmb/Paper...a-xml2003.html.

Yuck, Javascript handled those tasks just fine, it seemed to me.

Did you actually read the paper?

[Ville Vainio]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes:

Mark> On 01 Sep 2004 00:47:40 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes:

I would have agreed with you before I saw the details of the
C-Omega language. Check out this paper on how XML and SQL are
handled directly in the language:

Yuck, Javascript handled those tasks just fine, it seemed to me.

Mark> Did you actually read the paper?

And I'd like to ask whether you've checked out David Mertz's
gnosis.xml.objectify?

To me, X# seems mostly like naive buzzword chasing - or a research
project that exists because someone needed a research project.

If you want to do something that could be worthwhile to a larger
number of people, add static type declarations to IronPython. There
you could really be pioneering stuff that will be in py3k. X# sounds
more like perl7, with snowballs chance in hell of being adopted by any
future python iteration.

--
Ville Vainio http://tinyurl.com/2prnb

[Mark Hahn]

On 01 Sep 2004 23:38:52 +0300, Ville Vainio wrote:

>> "Mark" == Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes:
Mark> On 01 Sep 2004 00:47:40 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote: >> Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes: >>> I would have agreed with you before I saw the details of the
>>> C-Omega language. Check out this paper on how XML and SQL are
>>> handled directly in the language: >> Yuck, Javascript handled those tasks just fine, it seemed to me.

Mark> Did you actually read the paper?

And I'd like to ask whether you've checked out David Mertz's
gnosis.xml.objectify?

To me, X# seems mostly like naive buzzword chasing - or a research
project that exists because someone needed a research project.

X# seems like groundbreaking work to me. It reminds me of the utility of
regular expressions but for XML and SQL.
If you want to do something that could be worthwhile to a larger
number of people, add static type declarations to IronPython. There
you could really be pioneering stuff that will be in py3k.
PyCs DOES offer optional static type declarations and many other things
from "Python 3000". Check out the website.
X# sounds
more like perl7, with snowballs chance in hell of being adopted by any
future python iteration.

Don't forget that reular expressions were in Perl first also and they are
used heavily in Python.

[Ville Vainio]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> writes:

Mark> X# seems like groundbreaking work to me. It reminds me of
Mark> the utility of regular expressions but for XML and SQL.

Yep, and Python doesn't need special syntax for regexps either.

Mark> Don't forget that reular expressions were in Perl first also
Mark> and they are used heavily in Python.

I imagine regexps have been around long before perl, though I might be
wrong. That aside, the regexps in the core language don't seem to
benefit the perl in any significant way - apart from pleasing newbies
who might live under the fallacy that having a feature "built right
in" makes the language superior for the task in question.

--
Ville Vainio http://tinyurl.com/2prnb

[Michael Foord]

Mark Hahn <ma**@prothon.org> wrote in message news:<ma**************************************@pyt hon.org>...

This is an announcement of the beginning of development of a new
Python-like language called PyCs (pronounced "pie-cees"). Like IronPython,
PyCs will be Python on .Net but it will have more advanced features and
probably have higher performance due to a Psyco-like implementation
technique. See http://pycs.org.

[snip..]

Can I add my voice to the list of those saying that cProthon sounded
interesting.... and that PyCs doesn't sound useful... unless you can
get it to generate something *useful to the python community*.

Regards,
Fuzzy

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantib...thonutils.html

[gabriele renzi]

If you want to do something that could be worthwhile to a larger
number of people, add static type declarations to IronPython. There
you could really be pioneering stuff that will be in py3k.

PyCs DOES offer optional static type declarations and many other things
from "Python 3000". Check out the website.

would the CLR type system be what Guido want for python 3k ?
(I mean, the old interface or class thingy).
I guess python 3k should have some type system more on the lines of
lispish soft typing.

Anyway, wish you best luck

[Roy Smith]

Ville Vainio <vi***@spammers.com> wrote:

I imagine regexps have been around long before perl, though I might be
wrong.

Regex's were around long before Perl. I first saw regex in about 1977
or so when I was learning Unix v6. They were used extensively in ed,
sed, grep, awk, and maybe a few other tools. Perl grew up sometime in
the 80's, in an attempt to unify all those tool (plus shell) into a
single language.

[Terry Reedy]

"Roy Smith" <ro*@panix.com> wrote in message
news:ro***********************@reader1.panix.com.. .

Ville Vainio <vi***@spammers.com> wrote:

I imagine regexps have been around long before perl, though I might be
wrong.

Regex's were around long before Perl. I first saw regex in about 1977
or so when I was learning Unix v6. They were used extensively in ed,
sed, grep, awk, and maybe a few other tools. Perl grew up sometime in
the 80's, in an attempt to unify all those tool (plus shell) into a
single language.

Regexes were invented by Stephen Kleene in the context of formal languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Kleene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions
I believe in the 1950s
The * operator once (and still is by some people) called the Kleene star.
Terry J. Reedy

[Tim Peters]

....

[David M. Wilson]

Also judging by what I've seen of Prothon and read here, neither of
your proposed languages are either Python-like or related to this
group.

[Mark Hahn] Tim Peters and Guido both disagree with you. They have both told
me to post here and keep the community informed of my work. They
consider Prothon a "sandbox" that Python can learn from.

This is true! Without mountains of backward compatibility
constraining you in all directions, you can try things that CPython
will likely never be able to try. You pick interesting things to try,
too, and Python 3000 stands to benefit from such experiments.

But you're not *required* to post here. If the general Python
community can't see value in fresh approaches (which is likely true of
all, um, "mature" language communities in-the-large), maybe sticking
to python-dev would cut some needless grief from your life.

[Richie Hindle]

[Tim]

If the general Python
community can't see value in fresh approaches (which is likely true of
all, um, "mature" language communities in-the-large), maybe sticking
to python-dev would cut some needless grief from your life.

As a very small part of "the general Python community", I'd like to
encourage Mark to continue his occasional posts to comp.lang.python. One
the good things about this newsgroup is that it sometimes wanders slightly
(!) off-topic, but those wanderings are usually illuminating. Mark's
projects are more on-topic than many other threads.

--
Richie Hindle
ri****@entrian.com