[Python-Dev] Keeping competitive with Go (was Re: Computed Goto dispatch for Python 2)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 29 May 2015 9:48 am, "Donald Stufft" <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
>
>
> On May 28, 2015 at 7:40:26 PM, Nick Coghlan (ncoghlan at gmail.com) wrote:
> > >
> > > One thing I've seen more than once is that new development happens
> > in Python
> > > until the problem is understood, then the code is ported to Go.
> > Python's
> > > short path from idea to working code, along with its ability
> > to quickly morph
> > > as requirements and understanding changes, its batteries
> > included philosophy,
> > > and its "fits-your-brain" consistency are its biggest strengths!
> >
> >
> > Right, Go is displacing C/C++ in that regard (moreso than Python
> > itself), and now that Rust has hit 1.0, I expect we'll see it becoming
> > another contender for this task. Rust's big advantage over Go
> > in that regard is being compatible with the C/C++ ecosystem,
> > including Python's cffi.
> >
>
> I’m not sure if I’m reading this right or not, but just to be clear, I’ve
> seen a number of people express the sentiment that they are switching from
> Python to Go and that the deployment story is one of the reasons. It’s not
> just people switching from C/C++.

C and C++ used to be the main "second version" languages used to create
statically linked standalone binaries after an initial prototype in Python.

Folks that learned Python first understandably weren't keen on that idea,
so they tended  to either use Cython (or its predecessor, Pyrex), or else
not bother doing it at all until first Go and now Rust came along (for
reasons unknown to me, D appears to have never gained any popularity
outside the ACM crowd).

If I seem blase about Go, that's the main reason why - the benefits it
offers aren't novel from the point of view of C/C++ programmers, they're
just now available without having to put up with arcane syntax, manual
memory management, an unmaintainable threading model, relatively poor
support for text manipulation, etc, etc.

There's no shortage of software needing to be written, so powerful new
additions to our collective toolkit like Go are advancements to be
celebrated and learned from, rather than feared.

Cheers,
Nick.

>
> ---
> Donald Stufft
> PGP: 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA
>
>
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