How much is set in stone?

[Peter Hansen]

Jive Dadson wrote:
> 
> I've looked into Python, and I am very impressed with what I see.  But I
> would have grave misgivings giving it to customers with variable
> declarations the way they are now.  I'm not sure I could sell the boss
> on it, and don't know if I would want to.  The situation is quite
> different from writing code on ones own computer to be used in-house.
> These programs will run equipment, often in foreign countries, that can
> break literally a million dollars worth of merchandise, and could even
> hurt somebody.  It is very important to find bugs BEFORE a program goes
> into production use.  

A necessary step to get the robustness you claim you need is to do 
extensive testing.  If one writes an application with Python and it 
breaks a million dollars of merchandise it will not be Python's
fault, but the programmer's fault for inadequate testing.

The only thing those other languages give you which Python doesn't
is compiler warnings which lull you into a false sense that your program 
is clean when in fact you were lazy and didn't do proper testing.  
If you do the same amount of testing with Python that you would need 
to do with other languages to be very safe, you would have just as 
robust an end result.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com