Inspirational Technology

Java Programmers Unite: Say NO To Python

In his comparison of Java and Python productivity, Steve Ferg notes that: A programmer can be significantly more productive in... Via: Nu Cardboard

This is kind of funny, but I do agree with the assessment that Python is vastly more productive then Java. I spent several years working with Java and in retrospect it was astonishingly unproductive. This included a project where I converted a team development effort from Perl to Java for all the reasons that are commonly stated for making such moves. In retrospect that was a horrible decision. I did it under the belief that we would have a more scalable process, more stable code and ultimately faster development of new applications because of this. It never really worked out that way and this was with Perl. I really regret making that move even though Perl is a far worse language for team projects then Python is. Over the last few months I've been working more and more with Python and I'm pretty convinced that the difference in raw productivity makes up for any loss from static typing and a compilation phase. I believe the same applies to Perl, although not quite as much.

What's important to understand about running scripting languages in large projects is you have to have good tests. When we were using Perl we had lots of unit tests, however when we switched to Java the code itself took too much precedence and the creation of unit tests suffered. Sure it's nice to have a testing policy, but schedule pressure can have nasty ways of interfering, especially when the overhead of the language is slowing things down. In the end our system became even harder to change then when we started out. The problem of course is that just because a language is statically typed and compiled it does not remove the need to write tests. So you're now taking on the burden of a less productive language while not shedding the burden of writing comprehensive tests. In addition, because of the static typing, compilation phase and OO access protection features of languages like Java your tests have also become much harder to write.

Because of this, I'm really starting to believe that efforts to improve software quality by tightening up the language features through stronger typing and rigid language features are really the wrong approach. I tend to believe a more profitable future will be attained by making languages easier to use and building in mechanisms that improve the testability of code. My feeling is that it isn't really important that you pass the right type to the right method, what's important is that the code does what it is supposed to do. Passing the right type to the right method may be a precondition for this, however it is not sufficient to guarantee it, and that to me just makes it overhead. Tests are still required. If dealing with all the static typing and compilation phases makes test development suffer, then I tend to believe those features are counterproductive and just get in the way.