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Comment by fabriceleal | Hacker News Reader

> is this the first instance of mobile Python on Android OS?

Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm aware that there are multiple efforts to bring "sane" languages (such as C#, by Xamarin) to Android, others than Java.

> Jailbroken iPhones have had this capability for years

I had no idea about this one, but I don't follow iOS development either.

> I'd expected this would happen...sooner?

I agree with you, but I believe this sort of thing should be backed by Apple (iOS) or Google (Android) themselves.

[EDIT]: formatting

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Well, I hope it's being done securely. I don't know much about the particulars of Android's iOS, but having a low-level language with access to the whole OS (which is what a real user would want for mobile programming, really) could be dangerous for native security.

On the other hand, if Google or Apple backed a high-level scripting language like Python, that could also lead to security concerns, but I would feel safer with that than something like C on my mobile device.

Android already has C. The only difference is that the public C API is relatively minimal, so to do anything useful you need to go through Java.

In what scenario do you trust random C code more than random Python code?

Unintentional security mistakes are much, much easier to make in C than most other languages.

EDIT: Sorry if this came off as a little harsh, but I guess I'm curious as to what you think the security advantages of C over python are, when everything I've heard says the opposite.

Reread my comment...I said I felt safer with Python over C.

I'm well aware that, e.g. a buffer overflow is something you'd want to worry about in writing C code. I guess I worded my comment strangely? I said I would "rather have that" than C, to which I was referring to a high level language like Python.

My apologies, somehow my eyes skipped over "that than" in the last sentence.

S'alright :)

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