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Re:OCaml Programming: Correct and Efficient and Beautiful by hedora on Saturday June 25, 2022 @03:46AM (#31873352)
Python is OK for throwaway code, but I've mostly seen it used for big systems that people (for whatever reason) didn't think were important enough to write in a real language. The people with that opinion don't share your degree of rigor.

I usually avoid bugs in python code by rewriting in bash (at 1-10% the size of the original python, since bash's error handling can be set to "always do the right thing" with "set euxo pipefail")

If bash is a bad fit for the rewrite, go usually works. I don't work on linear algebra software much these days. Python seems to be a good option for that.

Re:OCaml Programming: Correct and Efficient and Beautiful by camgunz on Saturday June 25, 2022 @12:39PM (#31876660)
Yeah I love Python for quick work and prototyping, and it's great for small web services and as a DSL for data analysis. I suppose I could also envision it as a backend language for a fleet of microservices too.

I think Python gets bailed out a lot because those things turn out to be a lot of programming these days. The people who have a beef w/ Python are those who've worked with it on large, old codebases. This is a tough job for any language though like, raise your hand if you've ever worked on a large, old codebase in C++ or Java that you liked.

Usually when people push microservices I'm quick with Conway's law, saying "this is a tech solution to an organizational problem that won't actually make a difference", and I think I'm right about that. But I think I've been ignoring that a really nice thing about microservices for engineers is you can keep using languages like Python on small codebases, and at least mentally and emotionally avoid the feeling of working on a huge monolith. That counts for something.