Home Original page

Python Productivity Gain?

simo simoninusa2001 at yahoo.co.uk
Sun Feb 15 15:00:36 EST 2004 
I think the main gain is from the lack of the compilation/linking
process.

I have C++/Java pogramming friends (I've dabbled too) and the biggest
hinderance to getting an app up and running is the "change code ->
compile+link (read the newspaper) -> test, doesn't work, change code
-> compile+link (make some coffee) -> test" cycle

Being able to save+run is great with scripting languages. This is why
a lot of C++/Qt programmers I know are switching to Python+PyQt or
Qt+QSA, as in these 3+GHz days, we don't really need the extra speed
from compilation, but saving a few hours of expensive programmer's
time is useful.

Other niceties are on-the-fly debugging/errors - Python and Perl have
this, PHP is useless at debugging, C/C++ just core dumps....

A prime example was the other day at work - I wrote a console utility,
then wrapped a TKinter GUI around it, which took about 10 minutes to
do. I then decided to add a feature which needed another widget that
TKinter doesn't have, so converted it to PyQt, I then found that a
colleauge wanted a copy for Windows, but we didn't have a commercial
license, so converted it to wxPython, all of which took under an hour,
I didn't even use QtDesigner/wxDesigner for my forms.

My C++ programming friend said that would have taken him most of a
morning to do, and then he'd have to build a separate copy for each of
Solaris, Windows and Linux.
More information about the Python-list mailing list