Is Python Ready for Prime Time? Yes!

Is Python Ready for Prime Time?

In the 5 March 2007 issue of eWeek, there is a great article entitled, "Python slithers into systems." It's good news for any software developers who are told by their management that Python isn't "enterprisey" enough for serious applications that should really be written in Java, C++, or C.

The article is about a project at ITA, a Cambridge, MA producer of airline IT software and services. ITA is replacing Air Canada's reservation management system with a new one written primarily in Python. The old system runs on a mainframe, and the new system will be hosted on a farm of Linux PCs.

Dan Kelly, Director of Application Integration at ITA said, "in addition to being a huge technical challenge, nobody in the history of airline computing has ever swapped out a mainframe-based reservation system for something else, that's the scary thing for us. Sometime in the next year Air Canada is going to turn off for a few hours, and then we're going to turn back on [using] the new system. That type of thing has never been done—going from a legacy system to a new system."

Regarding the skepticism that dynamic languages like Python may not be up to the task, the article states, "Much of the code ITA employs is written in Python, despite skepticism by some that dynamic languages are not ready for prime time. However, people such as Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, point to the successful use of the language at places such as Google and YouTube, which endure enterprise-scale traffic on a daily basis. Meanwhile, ITA has about 200,000 lines of Python code in use in its production software."

The new system is mostly written in Python, but not exclusively: "There are components written in Java, LISP, C++ and Python. For each component area, we got a functional spec from the customer saying it has to do X, and we had to figure out who the right people were to work on that project, and those people decide what implementation language to use," Kelly said. He continues, "But it's just coming into its own where you could defend it to nontechnical people as a language on which you could develop enterprise software. One of the things we have going for us is, because we're founded by computer scientists, we don't have to defend our use of that programming language because it's not Java. We have a wonderful ability here to choose the right tool for the job. We have components that are written in Java, in C++, in Python, and Ruby and Perl. [Python is] definitely viewed internally here by some of the best computer scientists in the world, people from MIT's AI [artificial intelligence] and CS [computer science] labs, as enterprise worthy."

Concerning hiring developers, Kelly said when ITA hires new people, they like to hire those with Python experience "because we've had a lot of luck with Python people having a lot of core problem-solving and system-building ability. He said it is pretty easy to find Java or C programmers who are good at line coding but not generally good at problem solving. 'It's much more unusual for us to find people who can analyze a problem domain and then implement a solution where they cross a bunch of problem domains. Python developers typically can.'"

A futher note about the use of the term "enterprise" from the article: "Adrian Holovaty, a developer at Washingtonpost.com and the creator of Django, a Python Web development framework, bristles at the criticism of Python as possibly not being ready for the enterprise. 'The word enterprise in this context is mostly meaningless to me,' said Holovaty in Chicago. 'It's really just a marketing word that has no basis in logic.'"

Memo to managers: trust the developers.

J.A.W.