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Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

I've been programming for nearly 40 years now and I've used all the popular languages in that time (popular for microcomputers) and I've mastered a few. I just started Python for the first time last year. Am I a Python expert? No. But I can tell you right now I can get a project done faster in Python than using any language in which I'm an expert. It's that productive.

Does that mean Python has all the performance you would ever need? No - we know it doesn't, but we also know that you rarely need that kind of performance and when you do it's usually localized to a very narrow portion of your code. Take that portion of code and implement in C and optimize to your heart's content. Even with that you'll still get your project done much faster.

Python is the tool of choice for those developers who just want to get stuff done.

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I've used Python for 15 years and I'm far more productive with Clojure. Don't generalize.

I agree with you on Clojure, but I'm not going to be able to get my team to adopt Clojure - unless you're going to tell me how you convinced your team to adopt Clojure! :)

Presenting a specific experience refuting an earlier generalization is reasonable here, I think.

I mean it is not just mentioning a specific experience to refute a generalization when there is also this: "Python is the tool of choice for those developers who just want to get stuff done."

Admittedly that last bit was a bit inflammatory, but I've gotten tired of the constant arguing over languages at where I work. I'm on a bit of a rogue team that's just adopted Python and are getting stuff done. Other people are just now starting to pay attention because we're getting so much done and now work is headed our way as a result. Wait until they find out we're not using any of the languages they're bickering about and are using lowly Python! Still, as awesome as my team is I think they'd draw the line at Clojure.

What features of clojure do you feel make you more productive?

I’m primarily a python user, but I spent time writing code in Ocaml to understand the potential benefits, but… (I would love to have my mind changed)… it feels like many of the features people touted about Ocaml have already made their way into python…?

1. Immutability / referential transparency seem more like nice-to-haves for a codebase, rather than the real reason people tout FP…?

2. Sum/product types and pattern matching are being added soon to python

3. Mypy is starting to gradually enable python typing, although I assume it’s still a work in progress

4. Python allows us to use map/reduce, and to pass functions around as arguments…?

I want to understand the potential benefits of FP more, but my experience with Ocaml hasn’t shown me great improvements yet. Open to having my mind changed.

In Ocaml, these things are all first class citizens and well integrated features.

In python, most of these "features" are done half right and duct-taped on at the last second as an afterthought.

I love Clojure. As with Python, Clojure comes with batteries included. It's dynamic typing and REPL makes development really quick and the JVM runtime allows to achieve better performance than Python in many cases. You can even go as far as compiling to native executable with GraalVM.

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