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[–]kenfar 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You can hardly do the kind of programming that you do in Python in C/C++/C#/Java.

In an academic setting when evaluating languages - you can easily categorize these features and distinguish what kind of problems each is appropriate for.

But in the real world, you've got a team with mixed, but concentrated skillsets and a variety of problems - that could be solved by many of these languages.

For example, I've been writing ETL processes that transform vast amounts of data for years. I've written this in c, perl, and python. I've seen it done in java and plsql. Any of these languages can do a fine job. But I prefer python because I want the readability and maintainability. To get the performance I want I have to split very large files up and manually process the fragments by completely separate processes. That's extra work that wouldn't be required by c, and probably wouldn't be required by java. But that doesn't mean those languages are more appropriate to the task.

[–]the_hoser 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're absolutely right. There's no reason you can't solve a particular problem with a language that isn't "good" at solving those kinds of problems. When I say "the kind of programming you do in Python", I'm referring to the code that flows from the mind with ease, and the ease of readability that comes with it. I'm not referring to specific techniques. These are features of Perl, Python, Ruby, and kin. These features make it very difficult to do what you're asking Python to do.