Anybody with experience able to chime in on a question? So, at a high-level, I am looking at using Python at my workplace. We are a weird amalgamation of a Java and Microsoft shop, using Java and Kotlin for 'critical' systems, while heavily relying on SQL Server/SSIS/SSRS for all our back-office processing (batch jobs, reporting, ETL etc). This is the stuff my team is responsible for, and we are constantly hitting the limitations of this stack. My feeling is that Python brings enough to the table as a general purpose language to be a good fit for our use-cases. Simple automation of file io, analytics and reporting, small footprint web frameworks (flask), big data tools like Spark, libraries like Pandas, PyTorch etc. Also, I don't have time to learn idiomatic Scala. It's not about laziness, its just that I feel Python brings enough to the table to be useful, while still being productive and readable. Then I read threads like this and start second-guessing myself. I see some red-flags for sure, but I'm just looking for some validation here. Basically, we have a lot that needs fixing, we need to do it quickly, and I'm wondering if Python can work. We are certainly in the realm of 'big-data', and are currently handling everything with procedural SQL, some Java apps that need refactoring, Perl scripts and scheduled tasks on Win Server, and a bloated, poorly implemented Java Web App to provide a front-end to our poorly maintained, non-normalized database.
I should note, I'm not particularly concerned with performance. We already have fairly optimized DB code, views, sprocs, indexes etc. This layer is currently sufficient for our needs. So ideally, we would still continue to leverage the SQL-Server. What we need, is to extract business logic from the DB, into application code which is testable. All of this processing is 'batch', we also have options for deploying (Azure, PCF) which can handle issues of scale. I'm more concerned with getting it right, than making it fast. I'm not very experienced with C#, but have experience with Java/Spring web development, and have yet to find any frameworks that allow for rapid development akin to flask or rails. Java/Kotlin is great for back-end dev with spring-boot, but full-stack... not so much. Also, I don't want to manage the complexities of any front-end JS framework-du-jour. I know React, Angular and some Vue. I'm very much of the YAGNI philosophy when it comes to front-end (at least for Enterprise apps). PyPy is a viable option, as I don't see any immediate need to call into C (although this assumption is likely to come back to bite me).
meh. I’m not trying to sound cultish, but if you’re not at least familiar with some of the packages I mentioned... Python is different than TCL. Python isn’t growing in popularity for nothing. At the end of the day, I just want tools that get out of my way, while keeping the loc I’m responsible for maintaining to be small and easy to grok.
Python is growing in fashion because those Fortran and C++ GPGPU libraries happen to have Python bindings out of the box, whereas other languages are only getting them now.
That and has replaced Java in many introduction to programming courses.
Which is good, when learning to programm performance isn't a concern as such.
I know Python since Zope was the only reason to use it, so around Python 1.5 or something.
Other than replacing what I used Perl for, regarding UNIX shell scripting, I never used Python in any scenario where performance might come into play.
There are plenty of options that beat Python's LOC, while providing an AOT/JIT toolchain out of the box.
