large-scale app development in python?

[gabor]

hi,

at the company where i'm working we have to rewrite a part of our
java-based application in a different language.

there were many options, at the end python and c++ remained.

our program is quite big, so c++ was an obvious choice.

python remained because we have to finish the rewrite in a reasonable
time, and python has all the necessary libraries or bindings that we
need.

but i got a question, that i couldn't answer:
-you can't compile python, as you can c++ or java => there's no type
checking before starting the program => if one programmer changes a
method name or method signature, then how do we know we changed all the
code that calls that method?

how do you solve these kind of problems? i know that unit tests are a
good thing, but i don't know if they can help in this situation?

are there any people who wrote a big program in python? how did they
handle these problems?

or python simply isn't suited to write bigger (more complex) apps?

thanks,
gabor 


-- 
That's life for you, said McDunn.  Someone always waiting for someone 
who never comes home.  Always someone loving something more than that 
thing loves them.  And after awhile you want to destroy whatever 
that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.
                -- R. Bradbury, "The Fog Horn"