my old CS professor disliked us using modern “heavy” languages instead of C for “trivial” tasks. He used to say “don’t whip your python out without a reason” ☝️

this wordplay is less obvious and more appropriate in russian, but turns out to be so funny when translated to english

"Вам не надо чуть что расчехлять свои питоны"

@vintprox

@kiki

"Не расчехляйте своих питончиков беспричинно" ☝

В уменьшительно-ласкательной форме, чтобы не преувеличить. 🤣

It probably comes down to my inexperience with C/C++, but taking an hour or more to write a program that can analyze a text file in C vs the three minutes it takes to do the same thing in Ruby or Python or C# seems like you're trying to prove a point and less interested in getting things done.

Yeah, makes sense: If the task is easy, you have to use the least comfortable and most dangerous tools possible to get it up to the minimum required hardness.

Cut paper with shaped charges made of tiny amounts of TNT, start programs by injecting the system call manually in GDB, write shell scripts in assembly language...

And that exactly is why computer science is not called practical software engineering.

@mansur85 Oh, I would never argue that. But I'd rather have something in production that does what it's asked to do versus having something that is blazing fast that never leaves development.

I wish I had the time to get proficient in C so I could have the best of both worlds.

There's always a reason to whip out python. Especially since I don't see sharp as much as I used to anymore

Language choice depends entirely on what you are doing.

Hobby project? Use the language you love or like most - or, if you want to learn a new language, use that.

Big industry project? Shit luck, you're gonna be using whatever the hell they tell you to use.

Startup with clueless clowns? Half-shit luck, you can probably build it in whatever you think is a good choice, but they'll constantly be pestering you for tHe lAteSt hYpE wRiTe iT iN haSkElL aNd rUsT!!!

Idk, seeing notions like "try to use only C at all times" Okay.... and I have to build a web or mobile app? It's clear people are siloed into their own thinking and have no production experience, regardless of organization size or environment

Scripting languages are faster to get things done but I wish more people were competent in C, it is fast and an easy language to learn and maintain.

Unless you are writing 3D processing graphic editor or games, I doubt there is huge speed difference between using c++ or C# or python.

Electron is an exception. It is painfully slow and bloated, it should be burnt with fire.

@daniel-wu Oh most definitely.

I have a pet project written in Python as a Blender addon. I've squeezed every bit of performance out of it that I know how to. An average import takes about 10 seconds.

I rewrote it in C# just to see what performance gains I could get by doing so. In C#, an average import takes about 6 seconds, but it's missing a lot of post processing steps that would likely add a couple seconds.

Between the two, the Python version is far easier to work on, so I think if I were to make it into a game, I'd gladly sacrifice some aesthetics to improve performance if it meant the game existed at all.

A silly opinion of course.

But I kind of get it. If he's super quick with C, using any dynamic language to solve a tiny task is probably equivalent to installing an npm package to do something trivial.

I think his opinion makes more sense in an academic environment where you learn more by getting into the details. But if you want to get something trivial done quickly, using a dynamic language like Python is often a good choice.