NTP - big picture

Richard Laager rlaager at wiktel.com
Fri Feb 1 05:38:20 UTC 2019


On 1/31/19 10:24 PM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Replacing Python with Go should happen first for these reasons:
> 
> (a) It's much easier than replacing the C.  Thus, it will give those of us
> with weak or noexistent Go skills time and room to ramp up. (Ian and I are
> already fluent.)
> 
> (b) Python library management is a mess that we want to get shut of.

I see why it would be beneficial to use the utilities as an opportunity
for people to learn Go. Is someone other than you or Ian going to do
that porting work? If not, it won't be useful for that purpose, though.

Even if it is useful for learning, it's not without trade-offs. The core
assumption here is that more people know Python than Go. That's why
people need an opportunity to learn Go.

Python is an incredibly popular language that is very easy to edit for
debugging--including in situ on an installed system. For example, you
can just throw in print statements. You'd be replacing that with
something far less well known, which produces binaries (which are much
harder to debug).

Also, if a sysadmin wants to build something custom, copying one of the
existing Python utilities and incrementally editing it is vastly easier.
Go seems like much more of a "programmer's language" than a "sysadmin's
language".

I don't see the same problems with Python libraries that you do. I have
used tons of Python libraries in multiple different projects/situations
and things work fine for me.

-- 
Richard

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