How is python safer than C? I deal with a code base that’s 10x more C++ than python, and when I’m on call to babysit the test clusters, >99% of the type errors are in python. With the occasional oddball exception to break the rule, the C++ type/memory errors are easier to track down to boot. (Python has its doozies too, BTW)

I think this is because writing python code is like writing C++ without templates, but all the integer types declared “auto” and all the pointers void.

The main difference is that the C++ compiler still* does more type checking than python even after you abuse the warning flags enough to get it to stop gently telling you to change professions!)

Reading it reminds me of when I accidentally got my emacs syntax highlighting stuck at “white on white” for a bunch of stuff, but I digress.

I guess I find it to be a completely unproductive, unreadable, and unmaintainable language. It’s OK for throw away prototypes, but I’ve never seen a team throw away a python prototype and rewrite it in another language. I know of python projects that failed and were [repeatedly] rewritten by the same team in python, and I know of python teams that failed and got swapped out for another language, but that doesn’t count. Part of the problem with the python prototyping story is that python wants to own the event loop and asynchrony / thread model, and changing those are often the main reason to swap languages — the next step is always a rewrite in my experience.

Wow. Long rant. One too many ‘assert “” != None’ errors this week. :-)