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Sure, but I'd value a good general hackers opinion over a specific language specialist.
by axod 18y ago
Sure, but I'd value a good general hackers opinion over a specific language specialist.
- gaius 18y agoIt really depends on your application domain. Someone knowing that the complex thing I want to do is already in NumPy and she used it herself yesterday and here's a snippet of code pasted into my IM is priceless. Similarly I might say, oh, I wrote some code that does nearly your thing, you could just change this one line. Pretty much anything I need I could code up myself in a half a day or a day, but all those half days add up. More than one project I've started in Lisp here (not to pick on Lisp, just as an example) and run into an issue that I could implement myself in time T or do the whole lot in Python in time T/10. It's a no-brainer. For non-trivial tasks to be completed within fixed periods, striking out on your own with a new language is a meaningless risk.
- gaius 18y agoPS I guess it varies between languages, but the wider community lists I'm on (Python, cx_Oracle, Matplotlib-users, Caml-list, a few others) are full of smart and helpful people.