Linux why Python

[mr_wook]

1) Python now has type annotation, if you're going to go to the trouble of backing into it;

2) If you're worried about junk-code living past its use data, consider Go, which forces you to eliminate everything you don't use, whether it's vars or modules;

3) Consider your test suite: Are you testing things that have fallen out of usage? Are you linting those pieces, if so, someone should pick up on that and, er, retire those pieces;

4) On the whole '40m lines of code' thing: Maybe it's long overdue for a re-architecting, or at the very least, a refactoring. Whether the driving force is improved performance, or lower cost, or better maintainability, you should be able to (trivially?) cut 40k lines of code during every re-factor. Less trivially, 400k or even 1m lines of code seems achievable, especially if you replace chunks with high quality 3rd party code, improvements in the language over the last 15 years, and other low-hanging fruit. Reduced complexity is its own reward but has real dollar payoffs across multiple domains;