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Comment by BerislavLopac

5 days ago

> python code could be so much faster if it didn't have to assume everything could change at any time

Definitely, but then it wouldn't be Python. One of the core principles of Python's design is to be extremely dynamic, and that anything can change at any time.

There are many other, pretty good, strictly dynamically typed languages which work just as well if not better than Python, for many purposes.

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BerislavLopac

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oblio  5 days ago

I feel that this excuse is being trotted out too much. Most engineers never get to choose the programming language used for 90% of their professional projects.

And when Python is a mainstream language on top of which large, globally known websites, AI tools, core system utilities, etc are built, we should give up the purity angle and be practical.

Even the new performance push in Python land is a reflection of this. A long time ago some optimizations were refused in order to not complicate the default Python implementation.

  • drob518  5 days ago

    You’re always free to create your own Python-like language that caters more toward your goals. No excuses, then.

    • 0xffff2  4 days ago

      This is not a substantive response to

      > Most engineers never get to choose the programming language used for 90% of their professional projects.

      If it was up to me, there are plenty of languages to choose from that meet my technical needs just fine, but the political friction of getting all of my colleagues (most of whom are not software engineers at all) to use my language of choice is entirely insurmountable. Therefore, I have a vested interested in seeing practical changes to Python. The existence or invention of other languages is irrelevant.