Brython - Python to Javascript translator • Hacker News Board

Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#1

Post by toni » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 9:44 PM UTC

Brython - Python to Javascript translator
brython.info

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#2

Post by awolf » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:08 PM UTC

I think compiler is the wrong way to describe this. A computer program that translates between two different high level languages is typically called a language translator.

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#3

Post by toni » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:11 PM UTC

awolf wrote: post #2

I think compiler is the wrong way to describe this. A computer program that translates between two different high level languages is typically called a language translator .

Thanks, I edited the title.

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#4

Post by mahmoudimus » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:16 PM UTC

Wow! This is so awesome. This has been tried before, but I don't remember why it never succeeded.

I wonder if this can get the appropriate community to make it a decent alternative compared with TypeScript and CoffeeScript - or maybe I'm missing something here?

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#5

Post by DanielRibeiro » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:19 PM UTC

Repl.it has supported python on the browser for a while: http://repl.it/ (an an interpreter, not as a translator, though).

It also supports ruby, scheme, lua and others[1]

What made it impractical was the slowness. Emscripten seems to work fine for clang[2], not so much for interpreted languages. Maybe the translator path can solve this issue.

[1] http://repl.it/#:languages

[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#6

Post by danjaouen » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:21 PM UTC

While this is an awesome effort, I don't see myself using this without list comprehensions/generators/itertools/etc.

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#7

Post by javis » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:21 PM UTC

This is amazing. I hope one day we'll have the option to use Python as a scripting language for the web.

I've messed around with Python turned on in Chrome, and I think it'd make a great alternative to JavaScript.

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#8

Post by tantalor » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:21 PM UTC

awolf wrote: post #2

I think compiler is the wrong way to describe this. A computer program that translates between two different high level languages is typically called a language translator .

Not anymore, see Closure Compiler, CoffeeScript compiler, TypeScript compiler, dart2js compiler, and tons more: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

It's pretty common now to call these "compilers".

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#9

Post by T-A » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:24 PM UTC

Also worthy of mention in this context: http://pyjaco.org/about and http://pyjs.org/

Re: Brython - Python to Javascript translator

#10

Post by 1st1 » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:26 PM UTC

Good luck with compiling anything without having AST trees and proper parser infrastructure. In it's current state this thing won't fly.