> A lot of important and large codebases were grown and maintained in Python

How does this happen? Is it just inertia that cause people to write large systems in a essentially type free, interpreted scripting language?

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hibikir 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Small startups end up writing code in whatever gets things working faster, because having too large a codebase with too much load is a champagne problem.

If I told you that we were going to be running a very large payments system, with customers from startups to Amazon, you'd not write it in ruby and put the data in MongoDB, and then using its oplog as a queue... but that's what Stripe looked like. They even hired a compiler team to add type checking to the language, as that made far more sense than porting a giant monorepo to something else.

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xboxnolifes 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's very simple. Large systems start as small systems.

	▲	dragonwriter 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Large systems are often aggregates of small systems, too.

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oivey 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s a nice and productive language. Why is that incomprehensible?

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wiseowise 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Python has types, now even gradual static typing if you want to go further. It's irrelevant whether language is interpreted scripting if it solves your problem.

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oofbey 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s very natural. Python is fantastic for going from 0 to 1 because it’s easy and forgiving. So lots of projects start with it. Especially anything ML focused. And it’s much harder to change tools once a project is underway.

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passivegains 6 hours ago | parent [-]

this is absolutely true, but there's an additional nuance: yes, python is fantastic, yes, it's easy and forgiving, but there are other languages like that too. ...except there really aren't. other than ruby and maybe go, every other popular language sacrifices ease of use for things that simply do not matter for the overwhelming majority of programs. much of python's popularity doesn't come from being easy and forgiving, it's that everything else isn't. for normal programming why would we subject ourselves to anything but python unless we had no choice?

while I'm on the soapbox I'll give java a special mention: a couple years ago I'd have said java was easy even though it's tedious and annoying, but I've become reacquainted with it for a high school program (python wouldn't work for what they're doing and the school's comp sci class already uses java.)

this year we're switching to c++.

	▲	zelphirkalt 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Omg, switching to C++ for pupils programming beginners ... "How to turn off the most students from computer programming?" 101. Really can't get much worse than C++ for beginners.

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tjwebbnorfolk 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most large things begin life as small things.

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IshKebab 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Someone says "let's write a prototype in Python" and someone else says "are you sure we shouldn't use a a better language that is just as productive but isn't going to lock us into abysmal performance down the line?" but everyone else says "nah we don't need to worry about performance yet, and anyway it's just a prototype - we'll write a proper version when we need to"...

10 years later "ok it's too slow; our options are a) spend $10m more on servers, b) spend $5m writing a faster Python runtime before giving up later because nobody uses it, c) spend 2 years rewriting it and probably failing, during which time we can make no new features. a) it is then."

	▲	gcanyon 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What language is “just as productive but isn't going to lock us into abysmal performance down the line”? What makes that language not strictly superior to Python?