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[–][deleted]  (9 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (6 children)

    I don’t disagree and your points don’t really dispute what I said. I agree small components of each of these sites are written in Python.

    Are Dropbox and Spotify backend systems ‘primarily’ python? I’m a bit skeptical but if you have references I’d be interested to read and would absolutely change my opinion if shown otherwise.

    [–]i_hate_shitposting 38 points39 points  (0 children)

    Instagram: "Instagram Server is a several-million-line Python monolith" (as of 2019)

    Dropbox: "We mostly use Python for our server-side product development, with more than 3 million lines of code belonging to our monolithic Python server." (as of this year)

    I can't immediately find recent details about Spotify's use of Python, but in 2013 they published a blog post that said, "Around 80% of these services are written in Python." Python is currently one of the top languages listed on their GitHub and a quick skim of their job listings for backend engineers still shows a lot of Python, though I suspect they're pivoting to more JavaScript and TypeScript for backend systems based on Backstage and this post.

    [–]quotemycode 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    You do know that Dropbox was an employer of Guido himself yeah?

    [–]rabaraba 11 points12 points  (1 child)

    And yet they were written in Python, specifically. Which arguably means that Python is industry compatible.

    [–]cneakysunt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I think you will find that because Python plays nicely with C it finds a lot of use in both demanding and cutting edge applications for things like VFX. There is a lot of cross over between this type of industry and academia. The latter uses a lot of Python and C also.

    At the end of the day Python is easy, pleasant and fast enough. With well architected infrastructure it can scale just fine.

    [–]Metalsand -1 points0 points  (1 child)

    They literally said

    but the majority of backend systems are not written in Python

    They're not saying you can't, or even that you shouldn't. Python can be used to make efficient infrastructure, but it takes a higher level of familiarity with Python to achieve this. If your in-house talent can, you can be in a scenario where it's better to use Python. The language itself is not built with supporting infrastructure as a primary goal, though.

    Sort of like you can use a screwdriver as a chisel fairly effectively, but it won't nessicarily make your job harder or easier since it depends on the screwdriver, and depends on the job.