Why Python is Important for Developers
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Join For FreeI believe that Python is important for software development. While
there are more powerful languages (e.g. Lisp), faster languages
(e.g. C), more used languages (e.g. Java), and weirder languages
(e.g. Haskell), Python gets a lot of different things right, and
right in a combination that no other language I know of has done so
far.
It recognizes that you’ll spend a lot more time reading code than
writing it, and focuses on guiding developers to write readable
code. It’s possible to write obfuscated code in Python, but the
easiest way to write the code (assuming you know Python) is almost
always a way that is reasonably terse, and more importantly: code that
clearly signals intent. If you know Python, you can work with almost
any Python with little effort. Even libraries that add “magic”
functionality can be written in perfectly readable Python (compare
this to understanding the implementation of a framework such as Spring
in Java).
Python also acknowledges that speed of development is
important. Readable and terse code is part of this, and so is access
to powerful constructs that avoid tedious repetition of
code. Maintainability also ties into this - LoC may be an all but
useless metric, but it does say something about how much code you have
to scan, read and/or understand to troubleshoot problems or tweak
behaviours.
This speed of development, the ease with which a programmer of other
languages can pick up basic Python skills, and the huge standard
library is key to another area where Python excels: Tool Making. Any
project of size will have tasks to automate, and automating them in
Python is, in my experience, orders of magnitude faster than using more
mainstream languages. In fact, that's how I started out with
Python, creating a tool to automate configuring Rational Purify for a
project where previously it was such a chore that it was never run (and
memory leaks were not fixed). I’ve since created tools to extract
information from ticket systems and presenting them in a way useful to
the team, tools to check poms in a Maven project, Trac integration,
custom monitoring tools... and a whole lot more. All of those tools
have been quick to implement, saved a lot of time, and several of them
have later been patched and updated by people with no Python
background - without breaking.
That building custom tools is easy hints at another strength -
building and maintaining custom software is easy, period. This is why,
while the quite huge Django framework might be the most famous Python
web framework, there is also a host of successful small and
micro-frameworks. When working in a powerful programming language with
a wide array of standard and third-party libraries, you often don’t
need to accept the trade-offs that are necessary when using any
large off-the-shelf framework. This means that you can build exactly
the software your customers want, rather than telling them that ”this
is how it’s done, sorry”. To me, this is a huge difference. I feel
ashamed when I have to tell a customer that no, sorry, this
seems like a simple requirement, but the framework we use makes it
impossible or prohibitively expensive to implement. Whenever this
happens, you have failed. Writing software that fits into the
customer’s model rather than into a framework is important, and I
for one feel that a lot of developers today have lost sight of that
simple fact. A lot of programmers now spend more time being
configurators of frameworks and makíng excuses for their shortcomings,
rather than actual programming.
Finally, if you’re a boss-wo/man or general manager, using Python has
a final benefit - Python programmers run into less frustration*, which
makes them happier, and even more productive!
(*may not be true when installing source-distributed C extensions on
Windows)
Source: http://blaag.haard.se/Why-Python-is-important-for-you/
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