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Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

It sure is. I've talked about this before but there is no reason to have tooling be in the same language as the end user writing it. Python for example has libraries in C and C++ (numpy, pandas, other scientific libraries) and the end user just uses Python to interface with them. Imagine if they were all written in Python instead, and how slow that'd be.

The only reason JS and TS tooling are written in these languages is because V8 is decently fast enough, but at scale, we can definitely do a lot better.

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Eh there's definitely some value in having the tooling be explorable and comprehensible to the line programmers. The value depends on the situation of course, like in the scientific python example probably low-close-to-zero.

But I think that's an outlier and the value is usually higher than that. Not always necessarily enough to outweigh other concerns, and I don't think always using the end language for tooling is the correct choice either. But it's a sensible default that you should make sure you get real value out of deviating from.

> there's definitely some value in having the tooling be explorable and comprehensible to the line programmers.

I think part of the reason Rust has been so popular in this niche is that it is pretty comprehensible to JavaScript/TypeScript/Python programmers. It's in any case much more approachable than C/C++ which would be the other alternative. The Rust build system also helps a lot too.

(obviously performance is the main driver)

I'm not a Python dev, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that Python's language bindings and its dependencies on other languages for major libraries is one of the main impediments to alternative or innovative implementations like PyPy or Jython reaching compatibility.

Sure, but for many scientists, they'll be way more likely to learn and use Python effectively than use C or C++.

It really depends. I doubt Webpack, for instance, would be successful if plugins needed to be written in C++.

Wait, to install this python package I have to have a working c, rust, and fortran compiler?

No, you get pre-built binaries. Of course you can compile everything yourself if you want

Good luck sorting it out for random OS XYZ.

We don't even have proper wheels for Alpine, let alone random xyz OS.

Julia was created exactly to move away from that.

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