> It takes 2.5x time to develop a program in Java rather than Python. It's been measured.

I thought it is 2.54 times faster. Python to Java is inch to cm.

Do you have a link to the study making those (very hard to believe) claims?

Why exactly do you think the claim is hard to believe?

People use scripting languages like Python due to faster development times. They certainly don't use them for resulting code performance :p

Youtube vs Google Videos: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eulODwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA136&d...

Youtube's 20 developers using Python were able to out compete Google's several hundred developers using a more traditional language.

Here's a study for you: https://games.greggman.com/game/dynamic-typing-static-typing...

Because nothing in Python is magic. There isn’t a single language feature in Python that somehow magically makes you more productive. All of the Python language features are also present in other languages.

And productivity to me is not how fast I can bang out a solution to a small problem. I can do that in many languages no problem. Productivity to me is being able to effectively maintain very large (million+ lines) code bases. Not having types is a productivity killer in that scenario. And Python being a slow languages (when not calling C libraries) makes it even worse.

But hey if you feel more productive using Python that’s great! More power to you.

People generally do interviews in Python if given the choice. Coding in Python being quicker is well known in the community.

For why Python is more productive:

Dictionaries (maps), sets, (generic) lists, tuples are first class citizens of the language with simple syntax.

Typing is dynamic, which means generics, abstract base classes, interfaces and tons of typical boilerplate code, which you would use in Java, are simply speaking omitted entirely.

Extensive library, which is easy to access by pip.

It would be very weird indeed for a developer not to be more productive in Python than say Java.

It should be fairly obvious why the hundreds of Google engineers were run into the ground by a small team of Python developers.

Nothing you mention is unique to Python. C# (for example) has all of that. And no there is no agreement in “the community”. Just look at the very long dynamic vs. static typing discussions we have all the time on HN.

And if you think that typing a few fewer characters will make you more productive then we clearly don’t agree on what it means to be productive. Programming is not about typing fast :)

And pick any two random developers using the same programming language and you will probably find that they vary dramatically in productivity.

And please don’t worship Google developers like they are made of magic fairy dust. I have worked with people who ended up joining Google and they were OK but not great developers.

So no it is very far from being obvious.

Getting rid of 60% of the code, generally speaking is a productivity boost. It's a bit more significant than a "few characters".

I'm pretty sure that developing with scripting languages is significantly faster than regular programming languages :p

Are you actually trying to argue against that?

Not sure why you think I was worshipping them? Several hundred developers being knocked out by 20 developers is an impressive feat.

> Dictionaries (maps), sets, (generic) lists...

You do know that Java has had those for decades, right?