large-scale app development in python?

[Paul Rubin]

jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) writes:
> > I think Zope is in the 100 KLOC range within a factor of some small
> > integer.  A large application these days may mean 10 MLOC or more.
> 
> You're right.  But of course, the *reason* we're all worried about
> large programs is that we want to know "how do I solve problem x with
> minimum use of resources", or "given these resources, what problems
> can I solve".  We're not trying to write big programs, we're trying to
> solve big problems.

I'm not sure I agree with that.  Programming tasks follow Parkinson's
law just like anything else: they expand to fill the available
resources.  That's why Microsoft Word now takes hundreds of megabytes
to install and run, and will keep expanding because more resources
keep getting thrown at it.

In more normal situations, infinite resources aren't available, and
programs reach a kind of stasis where they do about as much as
possible while staying maintainable.  So an organization developing in
Python instead of Java won't get a smaller program that's cheaper to
maintain.  They'll get a comparably sized program that does more.