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Visual Python 0.1 Loosed
realberen writes: "Visual Python 0.1 is released. Quoting the Web site: Visual Python, at its current stage of development, is a set of components aimed at GNOME and KDE application developers to enable them to easily add scripting capabilities to their applications. Ah, how I love Python! :)" Does this neatly counteract the argument that MS Office applications are necessary for complex, scripted integration (via Visual Basic)?
Actually, it neatly counteracts the argument that Linux (and other OSS) are immune to the kind of complex bloatware that plagues Windows like an integrated programming language and web browser in the Office suite.
what measures are beeing taken to ensure that VP does not expose *nix to some of the same problems that plauge Windows.
If I'm not mistaken, the real problem(s) with VBScript don't lie within the language, but within the security 'sandbox'. If, for instance, Outlook had a properly set up security sandbox, melissa, and IloveYou would never have happened. We can't blame a LANGUAGE for this.
We don't blame perl if the admin are stupid enough to set perl suid root. We blame the admin.
Also, as you mentioned, no, users don't get root. So, a user takes a big risk any time (s)he runs untrusted code, but at least it's impossible for this code to screw over other users.
If there's one thing that Python truly excels at, it's providing scripting extensions for other programs. Apart from all of the other reasons I like it, the fact is that in many large projects scripting is a definite plus feature, either for users (things like rule engines and the like) or for developers (for easy bespoke development).
At the last place I worked we had a large client/server MIS system using CORBA for communications. All of the CORBA objects were written in C++ and then wrapped using the Python extension libraries and given a Python script frontend - to the end-user they simply appeared as straight Python objects with all of the flexibility that entailed.
The clients then had the Python engine embedded into them and could load and run scripts, which then used the CORBA wrappers to interface with the servers, allowing you to set up entire sequences of events in a simple script. And because this functionality is part of Python the amount of work is fairly minimal.
Apart from that Python's excellent object orientation makes it ideal for GUI libraries - see wxPython for a good example. All that'll be required for developers to use this is to embed an interpreter within their program - not that difficult at all - and then wrap enough of the program objects to provide the desired functionality. The wrapping is fairly straightfoward - we had a script that converted CORBA .IDLs to the C++ wrapping code - and shouldn't take long at all.
All in all, this is a great idea for anyone who wants to add scripting to an application, but didn't want to spend ages coding it.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
I see that it appears to be unrelated to the other VisualPython under development by Activestate. Looks like the lawyers will have fun on this one.
I dunno; scripting certainly opens a can of worms, but I think that it isn't necessarily a security nightmare.
It depends on the application, doesn't it? The Melissa type trojan depends on the insecurity of outlook and MS office, not VB per se. It's outlook/office's fault for launching scripts in a hostile environment with no attempt to verify that the script should be trusted.
Lotus Notes provides an almost identical scripting language called Lotuscript, but the application requires that scripts be cryptographically signed by a trusted party.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
One thing which many folks don't seem to realize is that in many ways Python has a number of the desireable features which Java has --- it has a portable bytecode which can be moved across different platforms, and you can even make a security sandbox for Python. And of course, it has the advantage that it doesn't suffer from the Sun-control-freak-mentality problem which Java has.
Python is actually a very flexible language. It's a pity most people don't see past the admittedly very strange whitespace-is-significant part of Python (which I'm not a fan of myself, but whatever). Maybe this announcement help encourage more people to take a look at the language.