So Claude can convert python code bases to rust or golang, and give you an easy 10x speed boost. Much better than waiting for Python performance to improve
So Claude can convert python code bases to rust or golang, and give you an easy 10x speed boost. Much better than waiting for Python performance to improve
There is a benefit in being able to read and understand your code. If you’re most proficient in Python, it’s reasonable to want to stay there, perhaps looking to PyPy.
Also, of course, the majority of SaaS apps (perhaps most apps in general?) are not compute-bound, so gains from performance alone shouldn’t be the only metric.
My current job has a mix of Python and Go. Personally, I dislike Go. I don’t like its syntax, I don’t like its utter lack of formatting standards (gofmt is not a standard; also it sets tabs - ugh), I don’t like its insistence on static linking, and I don’t like how people claim it’s a great scripting language when you can’t just run a file on its own (and its stdlib is weak sauce compared to Python).
I can read rust much easier than go at least. If the Python doesn't have types then it's about even as well.
Of course, Claude understands Rust, too.
For a lot of scripts (think replacement to bash scripts - perhaps even one-offs), Python will save time over rust compilation times.
Golang it is then! I'm really enjoying the fast compile time compared to C++...
And packaging + distribution is ridiculously easy.
We are moving every script we can to Go. Compared to bash it's a no-brainer, every dev can understand it, it has approximately .0000000000001% of the possible footguns, a great debugger, etc.
For one offs, sure. But once you get to a script executed multiple times it doesn't take very long before you have payed off the rust compile time. Especially if it is fairly simple (as in, you can do everything with just rust std lib and not a bunch of rust libs).
Almost all the rust compilation times come from needing to build the supporting libs. For simple scripts, it's very possible to get away with just using the std lib.
At the same time, If a python script can be thrown together in 20 minutes, and it will execute hundreds of times at most..... Who really cares if it takes 25 seconds to execute, or 2 minutes as long as it accomplishes all it is intended to do?
In my opinion, what is pretty typical a script will be executed never, once, or thousands of times.
If you are at the point of doing multiple executions, you are probably at the point where converting your script to rust would end up saving time/power. Maybe not all the time (like a manually executed script), but not infrequently.
Non-optimized builds can be pretty quick, although I guess you're always paying for borrow checking.
Why not convert to assembly?
Portability