The conversation

Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I used to be a huge dynamic languages fan, with python being my favorite language over the majority …

I used to be a huge dynamic languages fan, with python being my favorite language over the majority of my career. Then I worked on a large python project of ~100k LOC with a team of ten. That's when I realized that writing code faster isn't the problem. Reading it is, making changes to code someone else wrote is, and refactoring across dozens of modules is a problem. Static languages help a lot with all three. I still love dynamic languages for small tasks, but I'd rather use a static language like Go which still keeps much of the dynamic feel, and helps catch my mistakes at compile time. I actually just set it to watch the project directory for changes and recompile automatically in a terminal on another screen (actually to run the unit tests, which includes compiling.) That's constant feedback and comparable to dynamic languages speed for edit-compile-test runs. But the best part is the unit tests. They run so much faster with Go that I don't get distracted waiting for them to finish, and that keeps me in the zone and much more productive.

Original discussionPython's “Disappointing” Superpowers239 source comments · at import
2

Community replies 0

No community replies yet. Add your perspective.

Replies from the source 2

Direct replies available in this import. Original-language excerpts.

TA

This is almost always framed in a way that shows large systems need the extra rigidity of some static systems. And that dynamic systems are only about rapid prototyping. I think that is a bit of a false framing. To wit, any system of 100k LOC will be hard to get into. Even harder to make changes in. There is no getting around that. None. Even worse if you have many entities flying about these 100k LOC. Each change to an entity will be dangerous. Static or dynamic. Especially if they are persisted anywhere, as at that point it is all too easy to get static guarantees that aren't reflecting actual data.

Full original
DE

A ~100k LOC project in a statically typed system with type hierarchies, interfaces, contracts and boiler plate will boil down to ~10k LOC in a dynamically typed language like Python. A 10k LOC project will be more readable than a 100k LOC project. Source: I have spent years coding in C++/Java, then Python. I have migrated Java projects into Python

Full original
Continue on Hacker News

Respect different perspectives. Share concrete experiences.

Sign in to post, reply, repost, and quote.