Ah yes, those precious precious CPU cycles. Why spend one hour writing a python program that runs for five minutes, if you could spend three days writing it in C++ but it would finish in five seconds. Way more efficient!

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Because when it is to actually get paid work done, all the bloat adds up and that 3 days upfront could shave weeks/months of your yearly tasks. XKCD has a topic abut how much time you can spend on a problem before effort outweighs productivity gains. If the tasks are daily or hourly you can actually spend a lot of time automating for payback

And note this is one instance of task, imagine a team of people all using your code to do the task, and you get a quicker ROI or you can multiply dev time by people

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 2 points 44 minutes ago

That also goes to show why to not waste 3 days to shave 2 seconds off a program that gets run once a week.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

exactly! i prefer python or ruby or even java MUCH more than assembly and maybe C

[–] menemen@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I mean, I'd say it depends on what you do. When I see grad students writing numeric simulations in python I do think that it would be more efficient to learn a language that is better suited for that. And I know I'll be triggering many people now, but there is a reason why C and Fortran are still here.

But if it is for something small, yeah of course, use whatever you like. I do most of my stuff in R and R is a lot of things, but not fast.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

But if it is for something small, yeah of course, use whatever you like.

or if you have a deadline and using something else would make you miss that deadline.