I've gone back to websites and tools YEARS later and the code as quick to pickup and easy to modify.
35 years of programming and I've never met a language so well integrated with my mind.
Of course Python nowadays has support for static types too.
The second is that I realized that Go is a statically typed language that is quite a lot easier to develop with than Python and other dynamic languages. It strikes a good balance between protecting you from mistakes while not making it hard to express your intent (most of the time, anyway). As I advance and become more concerned about my time, I find myself reaching for Go more often because the static type system has my back. I spend less time writing unit tests or iteratively running my code to make sure things still work. (People said this about Haskell and Rust and OCaml too, so I understand the skepticism dynamic language proponents have for claims like these). The deployment, dependency management, and performance stories are also quite a lot nicer in Go, and these are undervalued components of “developing velocity” as well, especially if you’re on a small team. It really changes the calculus for static vs dynamic language discussions.
I would dispute that, but I guess it depends on one's workflow. Different workflows work better with different kinds of type systems.
That's a pretty good way to put it - and mirrors my feelings. I've been programming for 20+ years (with breaks here and there), and it took a while for me to find Python. But when I found it, it's like I finally found the language that my brain thinks in.
I had written some POC scientific code for my undergrad thesis, but the thesis was sidetracked for about a year or so due to real-life issues. When I went back, I could try and test things again in just a day or two, in comparison to much more detailed documented Matlab and C code.
- There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
- Simple is better than complex.
Pythons strength comes from being pretty good at scientific computing, and equally good at just about everything else.
Want to do web server development? Flask, Django, Tornado, etc... can do that. Probably not as concurrently as Go, but it'll do.
Scientific computing? Its no Matlab, but the syntax is easy and the time you lose in processing you make up for when developing.
Desktop computing? PyQT is pretty good. Electron may be faster to build with, C will be faster at runtime, but Python, even with Tkinter, is ok.
Functional programming? There are list comprehensions, map, reduce and filter. Not as good as Haskell or Lisp, but it'll do.
Python isn't the killer language for any of these really, but its good enough in almost all cases that you'll be very productive and can iterate to a good MVP quicker than with most other languages.