Python article on CIO.com

February 19th, 2008 § 8 comments

Here’s an arti­cle posted on CIO.com enti­tled:You Used Python to Write WHAT? Pros/Cons of Python for Enter­prise Use.

It’s a decent piece — there’s a state­ment I’m stuck mulling over:

Fur­ther­more, the power and expres­siv­ity that Python offers means that it may require more skilled devel­op­ers. Java or C# are more restric­tive by design, forc­ing pro­gram­mers to adhere to stricter rules around type safety and inter­face com­pli­ance. For some, that hin­ders pro­duc­tiv­ity. For oth­ers, it reduces mis­takes or acci­dents of design.

The ques­tion I’m mulling over is the one of “does the flex­i­bil­ity of Python mean that only more skilled devel­op­ers”? If you change the word “skilled” to “dis­ci­plined” it dra­mat­i­cally changes the mean­ing and con­text of the ques­tion.
I said this to some­one the other day — a com­piler doesn’t make illog­i­cal code logical.

Oh well, back to crunch-time and mov­ing prep.

  • Paddy3118

    It makes me think more of “Do you trust your devel­op­ers”? More trust maybe needed when devel­op­ing in Python, but equally trust­ing may make peo­ple more trust worthy.

  • http://www.percious.com Chris Perkins

    I think Mar­tin has a valid point here. There are seem­ingly vew python courses avail­able and many peo­ple who want to learn…

    The thing is, as you grow as a python pro­gram­mer you start to use more of the idioms avail­able to you. In time your code becomes much more pythonic, but much less read­able to the lay-java/C++ pro­gram­mer. Imag­ine if some­one forced the con­cept of “yield” on you the first week you were pro­gram­ming in python.…

    Then you leave.

    The com­pany may have a dif­fi­cult time find­ing a Python pro­gram­mer who has used it for any­thing more than a sim­ple file manip­u­la­tion. It is also harder for com­pa­nies to ver­ify the level of skill that a python pro­gram­mer has because there are no cer­ti­fi­ca­tions… not that those mean any­thing anyway.

    Now, does sta­tic typ­ing make less break­able code? It is debat­able. Does dis­ci­pline ensure that the code can be under­stood by your pre­de­ces­sor? I am dubious.

    –chris

  • http://www.rare-it.com/blog/ SwitchBL8

    Fur­ther­more, the arti­cle states:
    “Python might not be an appro­pri­ate choice if you:
    Are build­ing embed­ded or mas­sively par­al­lel sys­tems for which a script­ing lan­guage would be an inap­pro­pri­ate choice (due to con­cerns about exe­cu­tion speed)“
    I was under the impres­sion that’s exactly why ILM choose Python and not some other language.

    The arti­cle is writ­ten quit well, but the con­clu­sion just plain s*cks.

  • jnoller

    I was going to go into my issues with the con­clu­sion — but I agree with you. I think the Con’s are weak — I could nit­pick plenty of other stuff, and the Pro’s aren’t very good as well.

    Then again, it was writ­ten for man­agers, right? I’m sur­prised it wasn’t writ­ten in crayon :)

  • Ken

    As some­one who works in a large DP depart­ment of a large multi-national cor­po­ra­tion, I have a slightly dif­fer­ent ‘take’ on state­ments like this. The “flex­i­bil­ity of Python” does require a dif­fer­ent set of skills than the tra­di­tional “main­frame COBOL” coder that com­pose more than 50% of the depart­ment in which I work.

    It’s an envi­ron­ment where you’re not try­ing to opti­mize the pro­duc­tiv­ity of your top-tier pro­gram­mers, but try­ing to make every­one suf­fi­ciently pro­duc­tive to keep the busi­ness mov­ing forward.

    (Remem­ber, that for every pro­gram­mer who is “above aver­age”, there’s one who is “below aver­age” — and is draw­ing a paycheck…)

  • http://www.rare-it.com/blog/ SwitchBL8

    Fur­ther­more, the arti­cle states:
    “Python might not be an appro­pri­ate choice if you:
    Are build­ing embed­ded or mas­sively par­al­lel sys­tems for which a script­ing lan­guage would be an inap­pro­pri­ate choice (due to con­cerns about exe­cu­tion speed)“
    I was under the impres­sion that’s exactly why ILM choose Python and not some other language.

    The arti­cle is writ­ten quit well, but the con­clu­sion just plain s*cks.

  • http://jessenoller.com jnoller

    I was going to go into my issues with the con­clu­sion — but I agree with you. I think the Con’s are weak — I could nit­pick plenty of other stuff, and the Pro’s aren’t very good as well.

    Then again, it was writ­ten for man­agers, right? I’m sur­prised it wasn’t writ­ten in crayon :)

  • Ken

    As some­one who works in a large DP depart­ment of a large multi-national cor­po­ra­tion, I have a slightly dif­fer­ent ‘take’ on state­ments like this. The “flex­i­bil­ity of Python” does require a dif­fer­ent set of skills than the tra­di­tional “main­frame COBOL” coder that com­pose more than 50% of the depart­ment in which I work.

    It’s an envi­ron­ment where you’re not try­ing to opti­mize the pro­duc­tiv­ity of your top-tier pro­gram­mers, but try­ing to make every­one suf­fi­ciently pro­duc­tive to keep the busi­ness mov­ing forward.

    (Remem­ber, that for every pro­gram­mer who is “above aver­age”, there’s one who is “below aver­age” — and is draw­ing a paycheck…)

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