2019 Python Developer Survey

Thanks for the link, participated.

Nice concise, adaptive survey.

Take the survey here: https://surveys.jetbrains.com/s3/c9-python-developers-survey...

No questions about mypy?

Is there actual hard data out there that suggests that Python provides significant benefits over a statically typed compiled language?

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how it seems that despite how fun Python is to write the dynamic types are really just a determinant with upsides that are essentially anecdotal. Why would one take a performance hit and give up a type system without hard evidence that there would be significant improvements to other metrics?

Developper productivity is order of magnitude more important than performance on most software. Dynamic typing is by design more productive at first. Static type systems might allow better productivity on the long term (maintenability, scalability of à big, complex codebase). If this advantage of static typing is a myth, or a truth (and by how much does it increase average productivity, for which project size?) is a really interesting question and I don't know any scientific study on the topic. I did read a study that showed that static types catch only a few percentage of bugs and that practices such as systematic code reviews, documentation/comments, unit testing and integration testing, and methods such as TDD, each of them has a far bigger impact than static typing. (it would be nice if they had measured too the impact of fuzzing, analytics, debuggers and language features such as having a GC). This study does not say that using all those practices obscolete the need of static typing but it show the irrationality that many "purist/religious" developpers have by claiming writing a program in a dynamically typed language is a maintenance nightmare while not saying anything about enforcing the said practices despite them having empirically a far bigger impact on bug catching and thus "code quality".