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You think we'd be better off with Python, a non-typed language against a typed language? Really, I like Python, but speed as well as typing is lacking. I'm gl

• beagle3 11y ago
  I'm referring to the hypothetical situation in which Java did not come along, not to modern Java vs. modern Python. Yes, I think we'd have been better off with Python + C++ (which is likely had Java not come along). w.r.t Speed - one of the reasons Python's speed is (still) lacking, is because it never got the amount of work Java did. JavaScript is no longer lacking in speed, and neither does Lua - and both are as dynamic as Python. Lua is much more impressive in this respect - LuaJIT's speed, the work of one person, is comparable to the best JavaScript engines, works of multiple big multiperson teams. The original Java was a little safer than Python, but definitely not on par with what you'd consider a modern staticly typed language. There were no generics, and everything was cast all around e.g. if you used a dict/map container. It was easy to have static typing locally, but not globally. The standard library at the time was really, really bad. I think I considered it acceptable only with Java 1.5. A lot of modern Java is like it is because it was in widespread use, and it was so bad to begin with. Had it been Python instead, perhaps Python's bad parts would have been addressed earlier (including lack of type checking and lack of speed - both of which are coming of age)