Eve Online - Interview @ Ten Ton Hammer

Ten Ton Hammer discusses the recent Stackless Python upgrade with CCP's Senior Software Engineer, Kristján Jónsson.

Ten Ton Hammer: To start, could you summarize what your high-level programming language, Stackless Python, accomplishes within the EVE Online world? How does thread-based programming work? In your press releases you don’t offer much of an explanation on Stackless Python and I’m sure the community would be interested in hearing a simplified version of what Stackless Python is all about.

Kristján: Python is by now a well-established programming language. Being an interpreted dynamic language, it allows for great expressivity to the programmer and rapid development. This makes it easier to focus on the software architecture and the problems at hand rather than having to deal with the infrastructure of languages such as C++.  In addition, the dynamic nature allows a very high turnaround rate. We can make changes to the code and see the effects in the running client or server without restarting them. It turns out that performance in terms of programming output by developers is just as important as the performance of the product they are developing.