Article of interest: Python pros/cons for the enterprise

[Paul Rubin]

Carl Banks <pavlovevidence at gmail.com> writes:
> FWIW, when I posted my comment about C++, I was mocking the article
> writer's notion that it was static typing and compile-time checking
> that made Java and C# "safer" for newbies, by presenting an example
> that clearly defied that.  I was taking it for granted the C++ is
> notoriously dangerous and newbie-unfriendly.

Well, sure, but the danger from C++ is precisely that it is untyped
(so you can dereference invalid pointers, etc).  Yes, C++ has a type
system, but it leaks, so the most you can say about it is that it's
better than nothing.  A better example than C++ might have been Ada,
which is in fact designed to be newbie-friendly in the sense that one
of its design criteria is that engineers who are not software
specialists (e.g. jet engine designers) are supposed to not be led
astray when reading it.  I have the impression that Ada programs are
much less likely to crash than C++ programs, unless you set special
compiler flags to make them unsafe (e.g. by disabling subscript
checking).

Yes, good programmers can keep track in their heads what types their
programs are supposed to compute, so Python doesn't stop them too
much, and the dynamicness makes some things easier (e.g. deserializing
arbitrary structures).  But it's the same way with assembly language.
It just seems to me that there is a killer language just around the
corner, with Python's ease-of-use but with a serious compile-time type
system, maybe some kind of cross between ML and Python.

I don't think Coq (http://coq.inria.fr) is beginner friendly
enough yet ;-).