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I know I’m responding to opinion but: developer productivity isn’t one of the pitfalls of Python. Yes I agree that if you’re using Python for a large scale pro

by isatty 7y ago

I know I’m responding to opinion but: developer productivity isn’t one of the pitfalls of Python. Yes I agree that if you’re using Python for a large scale project involving lots of developers its not the best; but that’s because it doesn’t have a good type system. You can’t work out why people like it so much because of this misconception. The languages that you gave as examples most definitely do _not_ value your productivity, it values correctness as enforced by a type system and refactoring needed for large projects.

deleted 7y ago
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willtim 7y ago
I am more productive in a language with an expressive type system (e.g. Haskell) than one without. Thinking about types not only guides me towards a working solution quickly, but the checker catches all my minor mistakes. In Haskell, you can actually defer all type errors to runtime if you want to. But I have never felt this makes me more productive.
dagenix 7y ago
It's unclear to me how a person can be productive if the language doesn't value correctness.
- pjc50 7y ago
  There are plenty of real world situations where neither the requirements nor the prerequisites value correctness, but getting an 80% or even 99% correct set of results while flagging the unhandled cases is very valuable. Python as a structured upgrade to Excel.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    I'd say the most immediate value/payoff of correctness is ensuring your own code is consistent with what you think it does rather than correct wrt to some sort of external specification.
- ensiferum 7y ago
  just spit out a bunch of code correct or incorrect looks productive and good on paper.
MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
The bigger the team, the more distributed the engineers and the bigger the codebase, the more productivity is lost by using scripting languages. I find it infuriating because it is so frustrating and it definitely does not feel productive. For a lone hacker, its the other way around. Compare e.g. to Golang's "programming at scale" rationale.

by isatty 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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willtim 7y ago

I am more productive in a language with an expressive type system (e.g. Haskell) than one without. Thinking about types not only guides me towards a working solution quickly, but the checker catches all my minor mistakes. In Haskell, you can actually defer all type errors to runtime if you want to. But I have never felt this makes me more productive.

dagenix 7y ago

It's unclear to me how a person can be productive if the language doesn't value correctness.

pjc50 7y ago
There are plenty of real world situations where neither the requirements nor the prerequisites value correctness, but getting an 80% or even 99% correct set of results while flagging the unhandled cases is very valuable. Python as a structured upgrade to Excel.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  I'd say the most immediate value/payoff of correctness is ensuring your own code is consistent with what you think it does rather than correct wrt to some sort of external specification.
ensiferum 7y ago
just spit out a bunch of code correct or incorrect looks productive and good on paper.

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago

The bigger the team, the more distributed the engineers and the bigger the codebase, the more productivity is lost by using scripting languages. I find it infuriating because it is so frustrating and it definitely does not feel productive. For a lone hacker, its the other way around. Compare e.g. to Golang's "programming at scale" rationale.