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> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no

by Dewie3 11y ago

> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance). That's what they all say though. Low level, high level, static or dynamically typed -- it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff.

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dorfsmay 11y ago
But it seems more true with python. Maybe because it's more expressive and terse, maybe because there is no magic (scope is always clear), and also, PEP8, which new languages tend to emulate and even formalise with linter such as gofmt.
NhanH 11y ago
Bet you ten bucks that any large scale programs (>60k LoC) in brainfuck is unmaintainable -- it's quite obvious that there are certain languages that are more maintainable than other, stupid stuffs or not.
scrollaway 11y ago
There is no language which is going to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. At best they will make sure the bullet is not also poisoned. However, there are a lot of languages which encourage bad patterns (like mixing app and view logic, or implicitly convert arrays into numbers when comparing them to strings or something, he said, referring to no language in particular). Python is not one of those languages. Use it as a tool, not a toy, and it will easily help you produce very high quality, maintainable results. Take a look at this for example, 1 year old hobby project of mine on which I still work daily - some of my most maintainable code. I have never, with any other language, experienced such joy at refactoring massive parts of a project given how easy it has been. https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace
- coolsunglasses 11y ago
  >There is no language which is going to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. How many guns and how big are the guns that are pointed at my foot? Is it an ion cannon or an airsoft gun? Most can agree one can be a happy user of $XLANG, but there are gradations of advantage depending on what you're working on. Plenty of people out there that are happiest working in C, but I don't think many would say it's the safest or most productive language to work in. Also worth thinking about how easy it is to extract meaning from software just by reading it. Explicit datatypes, specifications, grammars, etc. can all help with that. Even better is tools that can make sure your program faithfully represents an implementation of those specifications and act as a denser mental encoding of code than code itself is capable of being.
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IndianAstronaut 11y ago
> it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff Easier said than done on large codebases with wide variety of contributors.

by Dewie3 11y ago

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dorfsmay 11y ago

But it seems more true with python. Maybe because it's more expressive and terse, maybe because there is no magic (scope is always clear), and also, PEP8, which new languages tend to emulate and even formalise with linter such as gofmt.

NhanH 11y ago

Bet you ten bucks that any large scale programs (>60k LoC) in brainfuck is unmaintainable -- it's quite obvious that there are certain languages that are more maintainable than other, stupid stuffs or not.

scrollaway 11y ago

There is no language which is going to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. At best they will make sure the bullet is not also poisoned. However, there are a lot of languages which encourage bad patterns (like mixing app and view logic, or implicitly convert arrays into numbers when comparing them to strings or something, he said, referring to no language in particular). Python is not one of those languages. Use it as a tool, not a toy, and it will easily help you produce very high quality, maintainable results. Take a look at this for example, 1 year old hobby project of mine on which I still work daily - some of my most maintainable code. I have never, with any other language, experienced such joy at refactoring massive parts of a project given how easy it has been. https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace

coolsunglasses 11y ago
>There is no language which is going to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. How many guns and how big are the guns that are pointed at my foot? Is it an ion cannon or an airsoft gun? Most can agree one can be a happy user of $XLANG, but there are gradations of advantage depending on what you're working on. Plenty of people out there that are happiest working in C, but I don't think many would say it's the safest or most productive language to work in. Also worth thinking about how easy it is to extract meaning from software just by reading it. Explicit datatypes, specifications, grammars, etc. can all help with that. Even better is tools that can make sure your program faithfully represents an implementation of those specifications and act as a denser mental encoding of code than code itself is capable of being.

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IndianAstronaut 11y ago

> it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff Easier said than done on large codebases with wide variety of contributors.