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> What if it isn't fast enough on your first attempt? Won't you wish your code was maintainable so you could change it to be faster? From my experience, this i
by lightcatcher 13y ago
> What if it isn't fast enough on your first attempt? Won't you wish your code was maintainable so you could change it to be faster?
From my experience, this isn't the case at all. A lot of the time my first attempt is in Python. The first attempt is really more of a prototype or a proof of concept. If the code works and I want to productize it, the code needs to be sped up. I have (at least) 2 choices: (1) make the Python code as fast as possible or (2) rewrite the whole thing in C/CUDA. If I take option 1, performance gains will be marginal and I still probably won't be happy with the performance of the software. Option 2 might take a bit longer, but at least I'll get something performant out. As I'm just throwing out and rewriting the first attempt, I don't actually care at all if it was maintainable code. I don't even care if the ideas in it were well explained/commented, because they're all my ideas and they're still fresh in my mind and I'm just going to rewrite the code and then document/clean up the fast version.
The appeal of Julia is that I no longer have to do this rewrite to make my code fast. Furthermore, if I don't have to do this rewrite, it is actually in my interest to make my first version of the code be maintainable and well documented.
- tieTYT 13y agoFair enough. But you ignored/changed the foundation my reply was built on. I'm replying to TFA saying "speed is second" and maintainability is... not considered. You're talking about "correctness being first" and speed/maintainability being not considered.