alt Hacker NewsGreat question. And I don’t think that Python, Ruby and PHP have a good answer. Scripting languages cater to human weaknesses. The 10-100x perf cost was never really worth it but now it’s impossible to justify.
Great question. And I don’t think that Python, Ruby and PHP have a good answer. Scripting languages cater to human weaknesses. The 10-100x perf cost was never really worth it but now it’s impossible to justify.
One question I have asked myself many times: What if Python had a strictly-typed mode? (It would require strict type hints/annotations.) Or there was a well-maintained branch that enforced strict types. I also thought that Python is a beautiful language, but the weak(er) typing is such a no-go (for me, personally) and causes ridiculous slowdowns at runtime due to this type flexibility. Finally, I know the answer why it has not been done: The ecosystem of 3rd party libraries is far too large to impose such a requirement. It would be the Python 3.0 upgrade all over again that took more than ten years to complete.