Python encourages developers' efficiency because of very compact, concise (and beautiful!) software that one can write. Based on my experience the number of lines-of-code is 5 to 30 times less than the corresponding code in Java or C/C++.
I have written SIP stack four times now in four different languages. First was a modification of a C stack based on RFC 2543 in 1999-2000. Later I reworked the user agent API and the library to create a RFC 3261 based C++ stack in 2002, with some C code hanging around. After graduating and joining a company, I wrote another SIP stack in ActionScript, which is like ECMAScript, in 2006. And finally I wrote again for this project in Python end of 2007. The first time it took around 4-5 months to get things going in C, then around 3-4 months for C++, around one month in ActionScript and about a week in Python. Based on my experience, generally for every line of Python code there is about 3-10 lines of ActionScript code, 5-10 lines of Java code, and more than 20 lines in C.
The source code for RFC 3261 implementation in Python for user agents is about 1300 lines, whereas a similar library in C++ or Java extends to more than ten thousand lines of source code. For a significantly large project, if designed right, one can achieve a factor of improvement in lines-of-code. Clearly writing one line of Python code takes more time than writing one line of Java code, but reducing the overall lines-of-code has many fold advantages:
- Less number of lines means that one can write software much faster. Implementing a typical RFC takes a day or two, unless it is big like RFC 3261 (SIP) in which case it may take a week or so. On the other hand, a C++ or Java programmer will have to spend much longer to get things going.
- There is less garbage (syntactic sugar) in the source code, which means reading and understanding the code is easier. Syntax highlighting tools, and embedded docstring mechanism help in a number of ways.
- Less code means that the testing and review efforts are less. The embedded doctest style testing is pretty convenient for small routines. Lot of code is easily reviewed just by reading the code and the corresponding specification or documentation, unlike in C or Java where there could be too much of interdependencies among different classes, methods and functions.
- Less code means there would be less number of bugs.
- The improvement in programming efficiency has further effect on the programmer, as he gets more motivated to write more code, instead of getting stuck in dealing with lots of code. While I don't have the numbers, I would guess that the development and testing cost in terms of man-hours asymptotically grows faster than the number of lines of code.
I have written many large software pieces in many different programming languages, C, C++, Tcl, Perl, Java, ActionScript and Python. And I have come to a conclusion that Python is probably the best, and should be used for all applications if possible. Projects where Python may not be used are those which have specific constraints such as low level access or performance requirements (C/C++), or need to work within a browser (JavaScript) or server (PHP).
