
Myths of Enterprise Python - justin_vanw
https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/12/10/10-myths-of-enterprise-python/
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freshhawk
That's a great overview, will come in useful when debunking this stuff in the
future.

One little niggle though, "great concurrency primitives"? I don't know about
great. Acceptable for sure, usable, good enough. If you use great then you
aren't leaving much room for languages with objectively better concurrency
primitives.

If Python has great concurrency primitives, what does Clojure have for
example? Super-duper-hyper-great?

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GFK_of_xmaspast
I've been a python programmer for 10 years now and am a believer in #6.

numpy is not always the answer, and cython is its own hell.

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pc86
> _Our most common success story starts with a Java or C++ project slated to
> take a team of 3-5 developers somewhere between 2-6 months, and ends with a
> single motivated developer completing the project in 2-6 weeks (or hours,
> for that matter)._

A story so common they did not feel the need to share it? Even taking the
least ludicrous numbers I'm going to say this is entirely made up.

\- 3 C++ devs, 40 hours a week for 2 months (8wks) = 960 hours

\- 1 Python dev, 40 hours a week for 6 weeks = 240 hours

4x difference in productivity is not a language difference, it's a programmer
skill difference.

And just for the sake of seeing the numbers:

\- 5 C++ devs, 40 hours a week for 6 months (24 wks) = 4800 hours

\- 1 Python dev, 40 hours a week for 2 weeks = 80 hours

= 60x productivity

No.

~~~
markrwilliams
You're underestimating the amount of effort put into simplifying and
clarifying implementations, APIs, and documentation.

This doesn't imply that preceding implementers are unskilled. Part of this
improvement is hindsight, but a not-insignificant part is Python's
flexibility.

I can vouch for the apparently unbelievable productivity gains but I'm just
not sure how to prove them!

Edit: As for not sharing these gains -- that's part of the point of this post
to the official PayPal engineering blog :)

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debacle
Does anyone actually believe any of these "Myths?" #6 and #8 are the only ones
that could even be remotely considered half-true.

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mhashemi
Unfortunately, unequivocally, yes, there is so much misinformation. I
definitely would not have spent so much time on citations, otherwise ;)

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debacle
I'm not even a python developer and I know most of these are completely
untrue.

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mamcx
Well, sure you are not a python developer... most untrue? Which ones? Why?

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vezzy-fnord
I must say, this is one of the most dishonest image macros I've seen in a long
time: [https://www.paypal-engineering.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uplo...](https://www.paypal-engineering.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2014/12/cpp_py_medium.png)

~~~
markrwilliams
Disclaimer: I work with Mahmoud.

Presumably "ASF" doesn't mean anything to you. That's because this isn't an
image macro, but rather a slide from an internal presentation that compared
PayPal's Python API for a custom serialization format to PayPal's C++ API for
the same.

Consequently it's important to keep in mind that advances in C++ aren't
uniformly available and expertise in it is hard to acquire. That's why the
image appears in a section describing the productivity wins available in
Python. The point is that Python allows us to develop something that presents
a clearer interface to a powerful and performant implementation, and allows
our users to worry less about blowing their feet off.

