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>Its weird to me that we'll pay thousands of dollars for faster CPUs then write new software in python, electron or a docker container running in a VM. Python

>Its weird to me that we'll pay thousands of dollars for faster CPUs then write new software in python, electron or a docker container running in a VM. Python has a REPL, Duck typing and hooks for many libraries including gui libraries. Electron is basically a browser you can program via JavaScript with everything you'll ever need to make a gui application. They both make a lot of sense when you consider the alternatives. However, I do wonder why there isn't yet an option to AOT compile python and electron projects into fast executables.

adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
the semantics make aot compiling based speedup basically impossible. Python is just way too dynamic to do anything with. If you need speed and nice language features, you're much better off using a high level language that has better semantics for speed. Julia is my preferred option, but Lua and a few others fit this niche well.
throwaway2037 3y ago
> then write new software in ... electron Yeah, I agree. The OP's point is a bit misguided. The reason why people use Electron is it is cheaper to develop an app in Electron. By "cheaper", I mean the cost of developers plus the hardware needed to run it well. How much does an enterprise desktop PC with a 3+GHz CPU cost? Surely less than 2K USD. How much does a developer cost? It is hard to pay less than 75K USD per year. And about Python: Almost no one is doing CPU intensive work in pure Python. They are using C-language extensions like Pandas, NumPy, etc.
- josephg 3y ago
  > How much does an enterprise desktop PC with a 3+GHz CPU cost? Surely less than 2K USD. How much does a developer cost? But the software runs on the computers of all of their users. How much money do their users' computers cost? If you have just 10k users, probably $10M or so? But software companies don't pay for my computer's resources. The money I need to spend on computer hardware isn't priced in to your calculus at all. They don't care. I find it pretty frustrating and sad.

adgjlsfhk1 3y ago

the semantics make aot compiling based speedup basically impossible. Python is just way too dynamic to do anything with. If you need speed and nice language features, you're much better off using a high level language that has better semantics for speed. Julia is my preferred option, but Lua and a few others fit this niche well.

throwaway2037 3y ago

> then write new software in ... electron Yeah, I agree. The OP's point is a bit misguided. The reason why people use Electron is it is cheaper to develop an app in Electron. By "cheaper", I mean the cost of developers plus the hardware needed to run it well. How much does an enterprise desktop PC with a 3+GHz CPU cost? Surely less than 2K USD. How much does a developer cost? It is hard to pay less than 75K USD per year. And about Python: Almost no one is doing CPU intensive work in pure Python. They are using C-language extensions like Pandas, NumPy, etc.

josephg 3y ago
> How much does an enterprise desktop PC with a 3+GHz CPU cost? Surely less than 2K USD. How much does a developer cost? But the software runs on the computers of all of their users. How much money do their users' computers cost? If you have just 10k users, probably $10M or so? But software companies don't pay for my computer's resources. The money I need to spend on computer hardware isn't priced in to your calculus at all. They don't care. I find it pretty frustrating and sad.