GO vs Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Sam Fourman Jr. <sfourman at gmail.com> wrote:
> I remember doing some browsing around, and the pooco people that make jinja2
> were not fans of python3(I forget the blog post), I got scared because a
> very large portion of my income was based on a single client... So since we
> were having scalability issues anyway, I moved them to GO, and it was a Win
> - Win, the GO standard lib does so much, and the scalability gains we
> received over python were so large, that we were able to reduce out AWS bill
> so much that I could hire another coder.

There are some communities that, for some reason or other, dislike
Python 3. That doesn't mean you have to. The Py2 model is a bit easier
for boundary code (it lets you stuff your fingers in your ears and go
"LALALALALA there are no character encodings"), but the Py3 model is
way easier for application code. Text is text, no matter what
characters it has in it.

> I really like python, and we use it a ton, but a python like compiled
> language did wonders for us when we needed it most.

Sure. And your reduction of AWS bills sounds great. Just make sure you
don't consume the entire extra coder's time doing things that Python
would have done for you. Go's character model is inferior to Python
3's (or at least, it was last time I checked - stuff might have
changed since then), so you may find yourself doing a lot of
unnecessary work to make sure your code works correctly. Do be sure to
test everything thoroughly, with characters from all over Unicode.

Personally, when I want "Python but faster", I go to Pike. Same
character/string model (even the same style of internal
representation), same broad object model, but a stronger focus on
networking and on staying running 100% of the time.

ChrisA