Suitability of Python for a Big Application?

[Olaf Appelt]

> > I like Python, but I don't think it's well suited for large projectes.
Also
> > it lacks in the speed department.
> > Also, I believe that it's lack of type safety and access restrictions,
which
> > is a bonus for small projects beccomes a liability in large,
> > multi-programmer projects.
>
> This may be true, but is debatable, and..

Well, everything can be drebated. ;-)

> While smalltalk implementations may be faster than Python, Smalltalk is
> just as dynamically typed as Python, isn't it?

Right.

> And I didn't think it had
> much of access restrictions as well. So unless you're recommending
Smalltalk
> for speed reasons, I don't see why it'd do better than Python in the
large,
> multi-programmer project domain?

Tools, libraries, consistency. There's more literature, skills and general
support around for Smalltalk than for Python.

I don't want to make Python look bad. I like it. It's a good language. But
given the requirements (and my interpretation of the gaps), I don't believe
that Python would be the right choice.
I might be wrong. It's IMHO of course.

> It's probably true there's more experience with Smalltalk in large multi
> programmer projects. I vaguely recall anecdotal evidence that it can be
> quite successful at this. If that's the case, your objections against
> Python as regards to lack of type safety and large scale programming
support
> may be less strong, though.
>
> To use Python in a large project you need programming (and design)
discipline.
> But such discipline is need with Java and C++ projects as well
(*definitely*
> with C++!);

One of the reasons I recommended Java over C++.

> static type checking doesn't magically make large scale engineering
> problems go away, though it can help, of course.

My thoughts exactly. It's not a silver bullet, but it helps keeping things
under control, especially when there's a group of programmers. IMHO.


Olaf