Python vs. C++ Builder - speed of development

[Andy Freeman]

"Brandon Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> wrote in message news:<_8I%9.6367$6P2.713325 at newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
> 1) set up a new tools environment, learn a new language, figure out how to
> integrate Python with my existing code, think for 1/2 hour, prototype a tiny
> bit of incremental functionality with Python, decide whether to keep Python
> or convert it to C++.
> 
> 2) think for 1/2 hour, write it in C++.
> 
> I don't gain any economies of scale using Python to solve problems I already
> know how to solve in C++.  In fact, I lose weeks screwing around with new
> ways of doing things.  Those are weeks I don't have right now.  My C++
> approach is quite efficient for the problems I'm currently working on.  That
> is the crux of the matter; some people don't want to accept it.

Interestingly enough, I was in Van Every's position when I used Python
for the second time, for an application that was fundamentally geometric.

Of course, I got to amortize "learn a new language" over more than
one problem.  (I never bothered to set up a python tools environment;
I use the same set of tools for every language.)

I cut my "here's the problem" to "here's C++ that solves it"
time in half (several months) by working through Python.

It might have been faster to deliver a hybrid python/extensions system.
Or, I could have reimplemented, as Martelli describes.

Instead, I generated the C++ from the Python.

> Before there was Python, there was functional decomposition, and building
> applications from primitives.  I don't know why people resist the idea that
> this can be productive no matter what the language.

We're not resisting that idea.  In fact, we all use it.  We're pointing out
that it's more productive in Python than C++.

Everything that works in C++ works just as well, if not better,
in Python.  And then there are things that Python does that C++
doesn't even think about....