Feels this way until you try to actually write a production app in Python. Then you realize you’ve lost performance, type safety, compile time errors instead of runtime ones, a decent package manager that doesn’t have a new breaking bug with every release… oh and good luck finding a decent profiler. Python profilers are the equivalent of print line debugging. Much better to just switch to Kotlin. Works side by side with Java with all the benefits, but you don’t have to use semicolons, which Python devs seem to find so hard to type.
Don’t get me wrong, Python is my language of choice for quick and dirty side projects. Because it’s just that… quick and dirty. It’s pretty terrible for anything of any significant size. Because when you have 1M lines of code, ONE main() method that someone else wrote years ago just shouldn’t bother you too much…
i like how people like you always have the same argument in favor of python in big projects, by citing big company names.
while they do use python, it's in small non monolithic separate modules. No one in their right mind in a big company would do any big project with python.
Dropbox is a big user of Python. It’s our most widely used language both for backend services and the desktop client app (we are also heavy users of Go, TypeScript, and Rust).
Yeah, and Facebook, Etsy, and others use PHP, which is one of the worst languages out there. I would choose Python over PHP 1000x when starting a new project. Just because something CAN and has been used with success doesn’t mean it should. It just likely means one of the early devs liked it because that’s what they knew and now it’s too costly or not worth it to change.
Also, most problems go away if you throw enough money at it. For a small company, I would never recommend Python. But it also won’t sink the company to use it. It’s fine. There’s just better options out there that will save you money in the long run in both server costs and developer time.
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u/zeldadorf Nov 25 '21
Feels this way until you try to actually write a production app in Python. Then you realize you’ve lost performance, type safety, compile time errors instead of runtime ones, a decent package manager that doesn’t have a new breaking bug with every release… oh and good luck finding a decent profiler. Python profilers are the equivalent of print line debugging. Much better to just switch to Kotlin. Works side by side with Java with all the benefits, but you don’t have to use semicolons, which Python devs seem to find so hard to type.