> Time and time again, a 1-2kloc Python prototype, the bulk of which was written in a week, would take months to translate to C++, at times longer than the whol

> Time and time again, a 1-2kloc Python prototype, the bulk of which was written in a week, would take months to translate to C++, at times longer than the whole process of research+prototype. I've heard reports like this for many years. My pet theory is that the discrepancy here is ~10% static types and ~90% memory management. Having a GC (or refcounting or whatever) fully baked into the language so that you don't have to think at all about how values are passed around and stored is a monumental productivity boost. Possibly the biggest win in software engineering productivity in the history of the field.