Comment by robsws
3 years ago
I agree thoroughly with this - it's fantastic for building something quickly. If I need a quick script to do one-off data processing there's nothing better. My biggest problems with it IMO with respect to maintainable software are:
- The syntax required to build libraries feels like messing with the internals of the language. Defining various methods with reserved names that have 4 underscores each doesn't really feel like something you are supposed to do. The code becomes harder to read and messy IMO.
- Runtime type checking is great for iterating quickly, but bad for stable software.
- Encapsulation is only enforced through external tools, so if you aren't using those religiously you end up with problems with tightly coupled modules.
- Dependency management is not a good experience. Understanding the different rules about where python pulls modules from is hard. Venv makes things a bit better, but even then it's still a bit opaque. It means that I often spend more time on getting external dependencies aligned properly than writing any python when working on a python codebase locally.
I have to admit - I use C# for that nowadays, at least as long as I don't have to follow the standard coding guidelines (which are great for software with a mid/long life-cycle). Once you get over the learning curve and don't have to apply good engineering practices (i.e. write code comparable to Python/Go norms) then it's way more productive (time-to-working-solution) and dependency management is great. The best bit - a huge amount of effort is going into reducing boilerplate so it's getting better and better with each release.
If I'm working with less experienced developers or people for whom software engineering is a side issue (researchers/academics, security experts, data-scientists) then it's Python all the way.