Space shuttle engineers use Python to streamline mission design
Software engineers have long told their bosses and clients that they can have software “fast, cheap, or right,” as long as they pick any two of those factors. Getting all three? Forget about it! But United Space Alliance (USA), NASA’s main shuttle support contractor, had a mandate to provide software that meets all three criteria.
[via Simon Willison]
This is a nice article on how using the right tool for the job [in this case Python] can shrink your development time significantly. It’s a great piece of advocacy for the Python folks, but also for the whole a dynamic scripting language as a “real” language approach.
Unfortunately it reinfornces the usual Perl issues: “Without a lot of documentation, it is hard to grasp what is going on in Java and C++ programs and even with a lot of documentation, Perl is just hard to read and maintain.”
I know no-one believes me, but I’ll just yell it again anyway: It doesn’t have to be like that! Well written Perl can be as readable and maintainable as any other language.
Unfortunately most of it isn’t. It’s too easy to written terrible Perl. And it’s too acceptable to write terrible Perl. And unless software manages start insisting that their developers’ Perl is as readable and maintainable as it would have to be in any other language, then we’re always going to hear stories like this.
