American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina

-Case-study 1, GAP (3%)-

- 3C -

For your case-study 1, please do research (using textbook, presentation slides,

and the internet), then answer the following questions:
1. What is a Python language, and how is it similar/different from other
common progamming languages such as C, C#, Java, and Javascript.

Every programmer writes code in some programming language. Different

programming languages support different styles of programming
(programming paradigm). Different programming languages require
different levels of knowledge, skill and detail that a programmer should
possess. The only programming language that the computer can directly
execute is machine language (machine code or binary code).

Now lets return back to the question. Python is a high-level general

purpose programming language with dynamic semantics. Python is a
platform independent object-oriented, interpreter and interactive
programming language. It was founded in 1991 and its development was
started by Guido van Rossum. It belongs to a group of open source
software, with good support, documentation and large amount of
framework and libraries with more than 101383 packages in the time of
writing this paper. (1) Its similar to programming languages such as Perl,
Smalltalk, Ruby, Groovy (indetation), etc. Python allows developers to use
several styles of programming such as: Object-oriented, functional,
procedural, multi-paradigm, imperative, reflective, and this flexibility
makes the Python programming language increasingly popular top 3
currently in every aspect along with Javascript and Java. (2) Also, Python is
most popular teching programming language at top of U.S universities
where 8 out 10 top U.S univesities teach Python including:MIT, Berkley,
Purdue, Duke, Carnegie Mellon and more. (3)

The main implementation of Python is written in C language and it is called

CPython. In addition to these, there are at implementing and Java Jython. It
allows the compilation of the code in Java bytecodes and the use of Java
classes within Python modules (files containing Python code). In addition
we have IronPython which allows us to use Python for .Net platform and
many more. Also, different intepreter versiosn exists such as PyPY, Pyston
which singificatly improve python execution spped when using certian
libraries or doing particualr tasks.

Python is general purpose language, it can go anywhere, you can make

games, websites, do data analysis , science stff, ai, machine learning,
make GUI's, write hacking scripts, even, it can be used on the client site
instead of Javascript using Brython or other implementations, but I dont
think this is a smart move, so its everywhere. The main difference of
Python compared to above languages are: execeution speed, syntax, how
the language is designed and the way how its being executed. So C and
 C++ will be much faster than Python bacause they are "lower to the
motherboard" and their compiler is much faster, while in the o ther hand
Python is scripting language and all scripting languages are interpreted
including Javascript. The difference is that th interpreter translates source
code to machine during execution, line by line, while in the other hand
compiler translates everything at once, checks for errors and etc.

2. Find at least 3 applications live on market, which are implemented

(completely, or partially) in Python, and discuss the following:
What are the benefits of using Python (both from user's and
developer's perspective), e.g. readibility of code, efectiveness,
quick processing of the data, etc.

What specific module/functionality is Python used for in that

project?

Discuss the pros and cons of using Python for that specific
module compared to another programming languages (this is
optional, and doesn't have correct/wrong answer).

3. Based on your research experience above, if you were up to bulid your own
project, would you use Python, and why/why not?

References/Source:
[1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/tags
[2] https://octoverse.github.com/
[2] http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html
[3] http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/176450-python-is-now-the-most-
popular-introductory-teaching-language-at-top-u-s-universities/fulltext