Python for large projects

[Stefan Axelsson]

Jacek Generowicz wrote:

> If you happen to find it, drop me a line, please. (Don't go too far
> out of your way though ... my stack of interesting things I want to
> read is mostly monotonically growing :-( )

I'll have a look around. I've only skimmed it, it's probably deep in one 
of my monotinically growing stacks. :-)

> You mean "damage limitation" and enabling "primate programming"
> (http://www.newtechusa.com/ppi/main.asp) ?  Yes, that's the whole
> purpose of Java, as far as I can see.

Well, more or less yes.

> Again, difference in philosophy. I assume that I am trying to write
> the best product I can. Writing bad tests is not in my interest. I
> acknowledge that this is probably not the case in most real-life
> situations.
> 
> Conclusion: I'm naively, romantically optimistic about what
> programming is :-)

No disagreement there. :-) We'll see how that changes though, now that 
the bubble has burst, and fewer people are drawn into CS that don't 
really have an interest in it. OTOH we have the outsourcing trend, that 
IMHO will drive programming into a race to the bottom. May you live in 
interesting times and all that...

>>It's interesting to note that Ericsson drew the conclusion that C++
>>was to blaim for the failed billion dollar AXEn project. Of course the
>>choice of language had very little to do with that.
> 
> 
> But that won't deter me from quoting it to all and sundry :-)
> 
> (Do you have a reference to this conclusion ?)

Well, no. While I could probably find an old policy document that stated 
it (God knows there are enough of those), it would be for internal use 
only. Plenty of stuff on the success of Erlang though (at 
http://www.erlang.org) which is dynamically typed, though it's not as 
effective propaganda against C++. (And indicentally, Erlang was once 
forbidden to use for new projects within Ericsson as well, it was *one* 
of the things that drove the opensourcing of Erlang. That policy has 
been lifted. In that case it was the old "You're too successful, we need 
to be able to bring people in from the street to do this, we don't need 
no stinking experts.")

Stefan,
-- 
Stefan Axelsson  (email at http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~sax)