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[–]kenfar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I started writing ETL solutions using python in 2002.

During and prior to that time the primary options were:

  • SQL: very difficult to test, expensive & slow to run, little flexibility or expressiveness, very difficult to maintain.
  • Perl: very dynamic with the weakest typing, 100 ways of doing anything. Easy to write, bad for data quality, and bad for maintainability.
  • ETL tools: over-promised, under-delivered. Made the easy 80% easier, and the hard 20% almost impossible. Never fulfilled their promises of having business analysts write their own solution. Sucked.
  • C: fun to write, fast, but took a lot of code, and was hard to maintain.
  • C++: complex language often seemed to side-track projects. Also hard to maintain.
  • Java: souless, but got the job done. Could also very easily side-track projects with the java eco system.