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Google on Wednesday introduced an open-source project called Grumpy to translate Python code into Go programs. The company's front-end server for YouTube and its YouTube API are mainly written in Python, and run on CPython 2.7, as opposed to other implementations (Jython, PyPy, or IronPython). The issue for Google is …

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      1. hellwig
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        Re: Just port the bloody code. @Charlie Clark

        Computers may make fewer errors, but the Python to Go transformation is a one-time only thing. If you want to edit the Go code, you have to go back to the Python code instead, because the automated code isn't human maintainable. That is a major flaw in the process.

        A one-time Python to Go converter is really just a toy. Someone's 10% project turned into reality.

        Continuing to write new code on Python just to be converted to unreadable Go is also idiotic. They're Google, they can't find someone who can learn Go? They really have that many "Python Masters" who are also incapable of learning a new language? Good engineers aren't stuck with the tools they used in College.

        0 1 Reply
  2. Dr Fidget

    NIH

    Of course Google could have joined in Python development and made a better tool for porting 2.7 to 3 rather than inventing YAL (Yet Another Language)

    0 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NIH

      Python 3 is just syntactic window dressing for 2.5. They backported most of the 3.x features to 2.7.

      0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NIH

      Didn't Guido van Rossum work at Google for 7 years where he spent a large amount of his time working on Python. So I find it a little unfair to say Google didn't try on that one.

      Also Go is more aimed at the C/Java space, rather than the python scripting space.

      The story is that Google had 4 official languages each for a different niche:

      Java - large scale app development.

      C - systems development

      Python - scripting

      Javascript - hmm no choice really - it's the language of the web browser and they are web company.

      Now they have gone on to invent 2 new languages - Dart and Go. Go kinda sites inbetween Java and C and Dart was envisaged as a replacement for javascript.

      Another thing to remember youtube was not a Google company to begin with - it was bought after they failed to compete with their internal effort.

      Whatever the merits are for python - hard core, large scale performance isn't one of them. Either use a lower level language for optimized code, or a language like Java to build a complex distributed model.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: NIH

        Indeed he did. I didn't realize he left.

        I would say Go is also a replacement for Python, for the web backend infrastructure stuff Google uses it for. Python's still useful for ad-hoc data wrangling but in live production systems it's a PHP-level liability.

        Go actually isn't a complete replacement for C. The GC in particular would be a problem for kernel code and some audio/video apps, games, etc.

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