Python Productivity over C++

[Russell Wallace]

Frank V. Castellucci wrote:
> 
> Courageous wrote:
> >
> >
> > > As someone who uses and likes both C++ and Python, I think estimates
> > > like that are excessively simplistic.
> >
> > Me, too. And yet I will claim that I've become *more* productive
> > in Python after a brief 4-6 weeks of use than I am in C++ after
> > 15 years of use, and that's no exaggeration.

*For the sort of things I use Python for*, I was more productive in
Python after two days than in C++ after 12 years if you include C.

> > > I use C++ for commercial programming, because it gives me the power and
> > > control I need.  Productivity isn't the best when measured in time to
> > > get the first prototype running, but I've found nothing better when
> > > measured in time to develop, deploy, maintain and support something a
> > > customer will pay for.
> >
> > Shrug. If it weren't for execution speed, your C++ environment would
> > be toast. Admit it. :)-

Actually, execution speed isn't the issue.  I write business software
for a living and for that, the time spent executing application code is
hardly ever the performance bottleneck.

> While the last line seems rather toungue in cheek, there are other
> things that C++ brings to the table such as encapsulation, access
> control and type strictness.

Those aren't big issues for me either; static type checking is handy,
but I could live without it.

What I can't live without, for code that's going to ship to customers
and be installed on machines I didn't set up, is low-level control.  I
find always at the end of the day I need to be able to decide exactly
what the system will do, rather than issue high-level directives and
trust the library/virtual machine/whatever to handle the details, and
I've yet to see anything (except assembler, of course) come close to
matching C/C++ for that.

-- 
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mailto:rwallace at esatclear.ie
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace