Python at Netflix

Post by daeken » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 7:40 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #27

netcraft wrote: post #13

Re: Web applications in python - I am curious about the overall feeling for them - Do you write web apps in python because rapid development makes up for any performance problems and if you run into problems you would rewrite it in something faster, or do you feel like a python web app can be just as good as alternatives when it comes to speed? Put another way - when you think of python for web applications / service…

I like Python for the speed of development. Also, at least for these internal apps, speed is generally of secondary concern, since these aren't typically high load applications. At reddit we solved the problem by writing the most often called parts in C and using c extensions. There is definitely more work to do there, but overall I think Python gets a bad rap as far as speed is concerned. It's certainly not the quic…

Post by tootie » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 7:44 PM UTC

frankwiles wrote: post #37

tootie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say that after doing a python project I totally don't get why people love it so much. The syntax is slightly cleaner, but the lack of threading, first-class functions and dependency management tools make it waste at least as much time as it saves. I honestly don't believe in the concept of a programming language being able to make code more or less readable. A Java project with a POM file can be up and runn…

Ummm, not sure where you're getting your information but Python has threads ( http://docs.python.org/2/library/threading.html ), first-class functions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_function ), and dependency management tools (google for pip, easy_install, etc.)

Post by SilasX » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 8:02 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #53

frankwiles wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, not sure where you're getting your information but Python has threads ( http://docs.python.org/2/library/threading.html ), first-class functions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_function ), and dependency management tools (google for pip, easy_install, etc.)

Sorry, I should have said "lack of true threading in CPython" by which I mean the GIL limitation. And lambda expressions are lame compared to what you can do in JavaScript/Perl/Scala. And the build tools suck compared to Maven which is saying a lot. Maven is cross-platform and install-free. It takes a long time to makes head and tails of pip, easy_install and virtualenv and it still does less than Maven.

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Mar 11, 2013, 11:47 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #24

e1ven wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep it up! Posts like these are great on a tech level, but they're also good recruitment - Seeing Python, along with hackers that I respect (like you) at Netflix make me at least the littlest bit tempted to go there ;)

You've caught on to our ploy! But in all seriousness, we like to share what we do because sharing is cool and it attracts other people who like to share cool technology, which are the kind of people we like to work with.

Post by pwang » Tue, Mar 12, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

DoggettCK wrote: post #12

pwang wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should also come by our booth (Continuum Analytics) and we can talk shop!

We were actually talking about your company in our sprint planning meeting a few minutes ago, since we're doing in-house Python analytics. You might be getting a call.