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Maybe you have the luxury of rewriting that others don't have. Do you rewrite to assembly? That's going to be really fast you know! With a proper test framew

Maybe you have the luxury of rewriting that others don't have. Do you rewrite to assembly? That's going to be really fast you know! With a proper test framework, people can and are building large scale applications. There are plenty of ways to optimize performance without a complete rewrite. Python is really Python+C to a large extent.

ilovecaching 8y ago
Prototyping is something that should be time boxed and usually costs me a day to a week of time at the most. Experience tells me that most applications do not survive the first iteration very long without prototyping, and Python lets me maximize my time spent prototyping. As for your jibe, my original point was that there is something between Python and Assembly. There are many languages that provide all or many of the nice things that Python gives us that are staggeringly more efficient and safe. Python is really Python+C if you’re willing to write C extensions, which completely negates the point of using Python. C extensions also don’t maintain safety, or solve Pythons shift of compile time bugs to runtime. It really only addresses the efficiency losses by making you write code in another language. People can and will build successful applications in all sorts of crazy ways. It’s a fallacy argument that just because something is done a certain way, that must mean there are no better ways that could save us time, money, and sanity.
- deshpand 8y ago
  Python is not perfect and languages do evolve. Maybe Rust or Go or something new will take over the world. But there's a trade-off between developer time and execution time and you can't focus on just one. There's also the benefit of a large ecosystem of libraries (and talent, if you are a large enterprise) when you embrace Python that may not yet be available in some other newer languages. Prototyping usually involves working with existing code base and the ecosystem, although if you are building a brand new product or application, your context may be different.

ilovecaching 8y ago

Prototyping is something that should be time boxed and usually costs me a day to a week of time at the most. Experience tells me that most applications do not survive the first iteration very long without prototyping, and Python lets me maximize my time spent prototyping. As for your jibe, my original point was that there is something between Python and Assembly. There are many languages that provide all or many of the nice things that Python gives us that are staggeringly more efficient and safe. Python is really Python+C if you’re willing to write C extensions, which completely negates the point of using Python. C extensions also don’t maintain safety, or solve Pythons shift of compile time bugs to runtime. It really only addresses the efficiency losses by making you write code in another language. People can and will build successful applications in all sorts of crazy ways. It’s a fallacy argument that just because something is done a certain way, that must mean there are no better ways that could save us time, money, and sanity.

deshpand 8y ago
Python is not perfect and languages do evolve. Maybe Rust or Go or something new will take over the world. But there's a trade-off between developer time and execution time and you can't focus on just one. There's also the benefit of a large ecosystem of libraries (and talent, if you are a large enterprise) when you embrace Python that may not yet be available in some other newer languages. Prototyping usually involves working with existing code base and the ecosystem, although if you are building a brand new product or application, your context may be different.