Invited Talk at PyCon 2009 Video on blip.tv at: http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1947412/ We are moving firmly back into a "polyglot" world in terms of programming languages. This presents great opportunities for Python (and other dynamic languages) as well as challenges. In this talk I'll be discussing some of the challenges and opportunities that I see for Python, based on my experience with dynamic language runtimes at Sun.

1. Challenges
and
Opportunities
for
Python
Ted Leung
Sun Microsystems

3. Scala?

4. Scala?
Haskell?

5. Scala?
Haskell?
Erlang?

6. PHP - 9.4%
Python - 5.2%
JavaScript - 3.6%
Perl - 3.4%
Ruby - 2.6%

7. 30%
22.5%
15%
7.5%
0%
Java C# C Dynamic
Java C# C PHP
Python Javascript Perl Ruby

8. Evans Data Report

10. O’Reilly Book Sales

11. Google AppEngine Beta
100,000 signups

12. PyCon Attendance
1100
825
550
275
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

13. http://flickr.com/photos/kk/1295074084/

14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/1407809687/

15. “All Cloud Computing applications
will be written in dynamic languages”
- Some Analyst

16. Security

17. Monitoring

18. libc.so.1`_write+0x15
libc.so.1`_fflush_u+0x36
libc.so.1`fflush+0x43
libpython2.4.so.1.0`file_flush+0x2a
libpython2.4.so.1.0`call_function+0x32a
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalFrame+0xbdf
[ build/proto/lib/python/mercurial/transaction.py:49 (add) ]
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalCodeEx+0x732
libpython2.4.so.1.0`fast_function+0x112
libpython2.4.so.1.0`call_function+0xda
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalFrame+0xbdf
[ build/proto/lib/python/mercurial/revlog.py:1137 (addgroup) ]
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalCodeEx+0x732
libpython2.4.so.1.0`fast_function+0x112
libpython2.4.so.1.0`call_function+0xda
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalFrame+0xbdf
[ build/proto/lib/python/mercurial/localrepo.py:1849 (addchangegroup) ]
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalCodeEx+0x732
libpython2.4.so.1.0`fast_function+0x112
libpython2.4.so.1.0`call_function+0xda
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalFrame+0xbdf
[ build/proto/lib/python/mercurial/localrepo.py:1345 (pull) ]
libpython2.4.so.1.0`PyEval_EvalCodeEx+0x732
libpython2.4.so.1.0`fast_function+0x112

19. Elasticity

20. http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloshbennett/3209564747/

21. Cores != Threads

23. 16 threads

25. 128 threads

26. Transactional Memory

27. Treat main memory as a database

28. An MVCC database

29. People understand transactions
Transactions compose

30. Inefficient
Non abortable operations - like I/O
Non-transactional code

31. !quot;#$%&'(%)*quot;+quot;,-./*
!

32. Actors

34. http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeander/3172415460/

35. Futures

36. A=Future(function, arg1, arg2 ...)

37. MapReduce

39. Persistent
Data Structures

40. Tuple Spaces

42. ABP work stealing

43. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgradinger/275818876/

46. serverjs

47. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dos82/3047823578/

49. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitzcelt/2903751010/

53. Do we want to?
http://flickr.com/photos/kk/1295074084/

54. distutils Paver
zc.buildout
easy_install
setuptools pip
virtualenv
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jow/2850092362/

55. Py3K

56. OMG!

57. http://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/218983827/ Scott Beale / LaughingSquid.com

58. http://flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/95796251/

59. Do we want to?
http://flickr.com/photos/kk/1295074084/

60. Thanks!
ted.leung@sun.com
http://www.sauria.com/blog
http://twitter.com/twleung