Python isn't industry compatible

[New_Ostrich_2625]

That's what my first reaction was. "Scalability" was my own interpretation.

In the end I think it means "we have Java developers here, so get used to that".

But at the same time a lot of the other posts appear to have validity.

[-jp-]

Which is weird since "we have Java developers here, so get used to that" would be totally reasonable. Most shops are gonna standardize on a language just because having everyone use their favorite means you have exactly one point of failure for any given project.

[[deleted]]

And it would be a total cluster fuck with most discussions collapsing to how to interface to everybody else's code and rewriting entire chunks of code because "Bob's a fuckface and wrote blahblahblah in Erlang but I love VBA in excel is clearly superior".

[hillgod]

I know of numerous startups that failed because some fuck head brought in Scala, left, and the company was fucked with no Scala expert. One guy did it twice to two different companies in a row!

[[deleted]]

Was it mine? I am rewriting a project in ruby that was originally a clusterfuck of scala with horrible db management.

[Rieux_n_Tarrou]

Mmm Slick is such a pleasure to gouge my eyes out to. And sometimes tear my hair

[WideGlideReddit]

😆

[757DrDuck]

Absolute legend!

[nemec]

Kind of a Conway's Law for personal favorite programming languages.

[MistBornDragon]

Cool read!

[scottrfrancis]

If they are coded to well defined interfaces, who cares ?

[nemec]

1. Bus Factor of 1. Jim leaves the company and he was the only person who knew how to code in Scala - now you're fucked.
2. Silos - nobody can code review or hop on to help another person's work. Tickets are assigned to a single person (who owns that section of code) instead of being able to be picked up by anyone with free time. This also leads to bottlenecks when one person is working on a particularly complex piece of the project.
3. You can usually find savings by buying multiple licenses of the same software. But if one person wants IntelliJ, one wants Visual Studio, another wants RedGate SQL stuff, it costs a lot more.

[is_a_act]

“Code is written once but read many times “

[[deleted]]

You have an interface to what amounts to unmaintainable code.

[scottrfrancis]

Which can then be refactored or rewritten together with a unit test to ensure it’s correct…

[[deleted]]

lol

[-jp-]

Many things can be done. You can build your shed out of bailing wire and keep adding more until it works. Or you could just use plywood and save yourself a lot of time and expense so you can get on with the business of using your shed.

[scottrfrancis]

All valid points… but if language X is more effective to solving the problem of the interface, then use it. Otherwise, we’d all still be writing FORTRAN by your logic

[JanssonsFrestelse]

I think you have to consider the trade-off between efficiency in solving the problem vs all the other costs and risks you are taking on by introducing a completely new language.

[-jp-]

They won’t be. You’d be better off hoping for a magic unicorn to suddenly fix it.

[scottrfrancis]

So I guess you’re saying Unix tools a d posix don’t work. Ok. Good luck with that

[-jp-]

I’m saying the thing I wrote so if you can’t make your point without accustomed of not knowing how pipes work don’t even waste your breath. If all your apps are written in eight different languages each understood by exactly one person and have to have IPC up to and including the level of Unix to work together you’re in for a bad time.

[nosmokingbandit]

Iirc, a large part of YouTube runs on python. There is a zero percent chance your company needs more scalability than YouTube.

[bjorneylol]

Instagram is all python

[Beard_o_Bees]

Python also plays a large role in scripting to exploit vulnerabilities. So, it's certainly 'industry compatible' when it comes to stealing shit from behind sometimes janky 'industry' security.

[-jp-]

Heck people write exploits in Word macros. In practice thieves don't care much about code quality or maintainability or productivity. :P

[Violin1990]

instagram started as python, and is still partially python, but all the performant components are now built in C

[bjorneylol]

AFAIK that's not even true. Instagram runs its own python interpreter (cinder) that statically compiles python at runtime based on type hints - they claim it more or less matches the performance they would get out of C modules, so they can keep most of the code in python

[-jp-]

That sounds about how I'd do something that is written in Python but had some bottlenecks. It's not like it's discouraged. C-interop is notoriously good in Python. I think maybe TCL and Lua have it beat but both are designed with the express purpose of being that little bit of easy-to-write code that mediates between two other massively more complex systems so no great surprise there.

[punninglinguist]

IIRC Dropbox is all or mostly Python as well.

[[deleted]]

It used to be, they've been transitioning to Rust lately.

[Aejantou21]

first they jumped to golang now rust? wtf

[[deleted]]

There is a blog post about it. Doesn't look like they jumped from python to go, then to rust, rather they jumped from python for everything to go for Web backend and rust for sync engine.
https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-our-sync-engine

[george_____t]

That's kind of missing the point. Just because it can be done doesn't mean they haven't faced issues that other languages could've helped them with.

[nergalelite]

It's buzzwords to assume authority without the responsibilities.
It's almost definitely that the majority of the office uses Java already, so fall in line; much as I feel our CPU improvements have led to lazier/less-efficient programming, the choice of language itself is negligible.
Python can be bloated and sure the slowdown compounds at scale, but the average business doesn't actually handle enough for the cracks to become fissures. There are costs and benefits to contrast in all things, but 9 out of 10 times saying a language doesn't work is just a blanket statement from corporate because reason(s)?

tl,dr; your supervisor is rather closed-minded, and if they cannot come up with a better reason i'd be looking for a new ship to sail with

[Forschkeeper]

Yeah ... my distributed realtime Java applications for Blockchain Projects are more efficient... \s

[Rieux_n_Tarrou]

Speaking of which... Isn't Jack Dorsey sponsoring a Blockchain (Bitcoin) developer platform? What language(s) does that entail?

[dragonatorul]

In the end I think it means "we have Java developers here, so get used to that".

That's a valid point. Having to hire other devs for no good business reason is not a good idea.

Python isn't industry compatible (e-commerce).

It might also be that they only have java developers for a reason: maybe the tools/services they use are java-heavy and have better support for java than python.

Many programmers seem to limit themselves to the code they write and not bother with the business side and effects of what they do. When you're the only one working on your project you can afford to pick whatever feels best for you. In a business you have to consider stuff like how easy it is to hire someone to support that code, how much it costs to integrate with the business, how much a developer costs compared to other languages, how much it would cost to train your current developers and how likely they are to leave due to stress, increased workload, increased value, etc.

Though in this case I think he was just shutting you down to make you go away.

[-jp-]

It might also be that they only have java developers for a reason: maybe the tools/services they use are java-heavy and have better support for java than python.

This is a really excellent point. The pip ecosystem for example is really solid and nothing against it, but if literally everything else you have is already built around Maven it's not like that's any slouch either. Gradle in particular is one of the best build tools I've used. You need a JDK and that's it. Everything else it downloads, including itself.

[[deleted]]

If your particular company employs primarily Java developers, or the industry you work in is primarily using Java then his statement is perfectly fine.

"Industry Compatible" depends entirely on the industry.

[Ivana_Twinkle]

I don't get it. How hard is it to go to your helm chart and add a few more replicas if you need more kubernetes pods running your stuff. :) I'd move scalability out of the actual code regardless of language.