New Python User Question about Python.

[Paul Rubin]

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:
> > > Python programmers tend to adopt a philosophy of making code work
> > > rather than making code fast.  Given a choice of doing one or the
> > > other, any reasonable person would pick the former.
> >
> > That is a platitude.  To paraphrase Jon Bentley: whatever computer
> > system you're currently using to surf the web has hundreds of known,
> > but minor, bugs.  If a fairy godmother appeared before each user and
> > gave them one wish, and they had to choose between eliminating the
> > bugs or making their surfing experience 100 times faster, do you
> > really think every reasonable person would decline the speedup?  SPEED
> > MATTERS.  From a user's point of view it sometimes matters even more
> > than correctness.
> >
> Nonsense. In the cases where correctness is important, nothing will
> substitute for it.  

Very true.  But not every case is like that.

> When correctness isn't important, what is?  A program which gives me
> the wrong answers in a tenth of the time is of no interest to me.
> Ask an accountant how much speedup would compensate for an
> unbalanced ledger.

The original claim was "any reasonable person will choose correctness
overr speed".  If you narrow it from "any reasonable person" to
"accountants", it's more valid.

> "Minor bugs" are irritating but acceptable not because they produce
> "slightly wrong" answers, but because sometimes they don't produce answers
> when they should.

A non-answer is sometimes the same as a totally wrong answer.

>But I suppose you think I'm not being reasonable here...

I just mean it's inappropriate to make sweeping statements about what
"any reasonable person" wants.  It depends on the specific situation.
Generalizations are all false <grin>.