Tim Goetze wrote: I feel your pain. Python is by far my favorite language ever. However, I've recently been looking for an alternative *compiled* object-oriented language, because let's face it, Python is on average 10 times slower than C. Sometimes you just can't afford it. Enter Objective-C: - STRICT SUPERSET OF C: every valid C program is a valid ObjC program. This makes it trivial to include or link to C code and libraries and to mix procedural, object-oriented and ASM code in the same *file*. - SIMPLE: ObjC is plain C with one syntax addition and a few new keywords. It only extends the C language to support Smalltalk-like object-oriented features, because that's all you're going to need. No more operator overloading, templates, references, 'const', etc. - DYNAMICALLY TYPED: messages (method calls) are delivered according to the dynamic type of the target object, not to some static type. This is how Python works. You can even send an object a message that is not specified in its interface. This might seem like a bad idea, but instead it allows for powerful delegation-based design patterns. - FAST: Objective-C performs dynamically bound message calls very quickly, about 1.5-2.0 times as long as a plain C function call! Objective-C is the language of choice for MacOS X development. GCC compiles it very well too. Using GNUstep (optional) as the system and GUI framework, you can make a GUI program that compiles almost without changes on both GNU/Linux and MacOS X! (Windows port in the working.) Objective-C can be as low-level as C (including #define, ASM...) and as high-level as Python (albeit a bit more verbose) IN THE SAME FUNCTION! Toby -- One theory states that if anyone ever learns how to use all of Emacs, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. Another theory states that that's how VI was invented.