Ask HN: Python vs Go for Web – Productivity-Wise

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34552271

by TigerTeamX • 3 years ago

3 5 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I hope it's not a too big can of worm I am opening here, and I can imagine it is quite subjective, but it would be nice to hear other people's opinions about this.

I have programmed for quite a long time in both Python and Go and I also experimented with rewriting the same solution in each language - for smaller projects.

Performance Go of course beats Python in almost all aspects, but what about productivity?

My experience is in general Python is a lot more productive, with less code but if you don't take care of keeping things well-organized then the productivity falls for bigger projects. While on the other hand, Go seems to be more linear (similar) productivity even if you have a larger code base.

What is your experience with productivity, especially as the project matures?

herczegzsolt3• 3 years ago

I'm just shutting down my startup, that was heavily relying on Gorilla-based web backends, but i've used django for larger projects as well.

In my personal experience, python is great for prototyping, but you'll be in growth pain, sometimes even as early as a hundred active users.

On the other hand, for me go is almost as productive as python. If i work in a team, i'd even say go is more productive. The simplicity and straightforwardness of go really saves a lot of trouble.

My personal preference of the two is Go, but i'd only use it if the code itself is important part for the product.

If the goal is to develop something for the web quickly, i'd use neither. They both have very basic UI features. Something like PHP or nodejs will give you results much quicker.

A big lesson for me was that quickly delivered questionable-quality software is usually more successful than great software with slightly slower development cycle. Go was not the right choice for the former.

TigerTeamX2• 3 years ago

Interesting. Would your opinion change if you where only in charge of the API? I.e. VueJS/React/Angular on the top by another team..

herczegzsolt3• 3 years ago

Not entirely. It is a lot quicker to develop APIs in Go than to develop webpages. It is a very convenient choice and it's excellent compatibility promise makes it stable in long-term.

It'll still be slower to develop and iterate initially with Go, than with a bodged PHP or nodejs backend.

I'm somewhat comparing apples to oranges, because you could of course create very high quality, well-designed PHP or nodejs code. In that case it'll probably not be any quicker. The point is that you can quickly bodge in PHP a lot of stuff which you couldn't in Go. In my oppinion this is a benefit of Go in the long-term, but a signifcant overhead in the short term when you just need to get things done.

Ask HN: Python vs Go for Web – Productivity-Wise

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