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Originally Posted by KyBunnies
Okay I am sure there is some tech person in here to explain or someone with more knowledge than me on this. So please explain the difference in Python and C++. Exactly what is Python?
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They are both programming languages. To explain the differences would take about a whole book. Just say that they are very, very different, and they both have advantages and disadvantages.
The most notable is that C++ requires you to handle a lot of stuff yourself, which Python handles "on the fly" while executing the program. This makes C++ much harder to write a program in because you need to do (almost) everything, down to the smallest detail, but if you get it done right, it will be much faster than the Python equivalent.
Therefore, if you need the absolutely fastest program you can get (think about a chess engine, for example, calculating thousands of moves per second), you choose C++. If you need to be able to write a program without bothering with the nitty-gritty tiny details, and speed is not of paramount importance, you go for something such as Python.
If Calibre was written in C++, it would have been faster. Also, you would probably see an update once every month instead of once every week, and there would probably be MUCH less plugins available.
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When I see/read python I honestly think of a snake. I guess that shows how countrified and computer illiterate I am.
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Programming language names are not tied to any convention. For example...
There once was a language called BCPL.
In the 60's, Ken Thompson thought it was too verbose, and was too big. So, he took from it what he wanted, made the syntax shorter and more concise, and because the language was much smaller than BCPL it was called
B.
Later, this language proved to be very useful, but it did need some additional stuff to make it more powerful. The result was called
C, a language that is still in use today.
Even later, when object-oriented programming came along as a new paradigm, this was added to C. The new language would contain the whole C language in it, and add extensions for object-oriented programming. Because the new language is basically a superset of C, it was called
C++.
edit: if you are now thinking: "Is there are language that descends from both C and C++ and is called... uh... D?"
Yes, there is. (Allthough C and C++ are not the only influences for this language.) This language actually tries to combine the advantages of languages such as C/C++ (execution speed) and languages such Python (development speed) into one language.
Python was named after "Monty Python", because the designers thought this language would make programming more fun. (They assume that Monty Python is fun; which it can be, at times.)