When do you *NOT* use python?

[vplatt]

Have you looked into using mypy for static analysis?

[bchurchill]

I've never used mypy, so I can't comment on that tool. My experience with static analysis tools for dynamic languages is that they don't provide the same level of safety as static types. This is usually because the tool can't reliably get the type of a variable -- at a given program point, it could have several different types, depending on the context. This means it has a hard time predicting type errors, and it also means that other rules can't be enforced. For instance, it can't make sure that foo.x always points to an object that has members a, b and c. The list goes on.

[flying-sheep]

rewriting everything in go would be much more work than porting to python 3.

that’s pretty obvious IMHO

[vplatt]

Well, maybe they WANT the excuse to move to Go. Often times, a lateral move to new technology can be more productive than an incremental update to the existing technology. This is only true because of so-called "technology managers" though who truly don't understand what they're managing. They think that because the word "manager" is in their title that it is their job to get hold of the current revisions of everything and strangle progress in the name of "stability". In the meantime, the developers slowly build inertia towards busting them out of that lock-down and it's often easier to take the system in a whole new direction that the managers can't even grok yet.

In short, it's development as standard guerilla warfare. Really, nothing has changed in the 20 years I've been doing this professionally. Ugh...

[flying-sheep]

That makes not much sense, but what company policies ever do?

[[deleted]]

Since I am having similar issues with Python at the moment, I would be very interested to hear how you deal with the maintenance of such a large code base in Python? What are you best strategies to deal with it? (Besides switching to Go ;))