How can I use Python for large scale development?

Question

I would be interested to learn about large scale development in Python and especially in how do you maintain a large code base?

• When you make incompatibility ch

Answer 1

I had some experience with modifying "Frets On Fire", an open source python "Guitar Hero" clone.

as I see it, python is not really suitable for a really large scale project.

I found myself spending a large part of the development time debugging issues related to assignment of incompatible types, things that static typed laguages will reveal effortlessly at compile-time. also, since types are determined on run-time, trying to understand existing code becomes harder, because you have no idea what's the type of that parameter you are currently looking at.

in addition to that, calling functions using their name string with the __getattr__ built in function is generally more common in Python than in other programming languages, thus getting the call graph to a certain function somewhat hard (although you can call functions with their name in some statically typed languages as well).

I think that Python really shines in small scale software, rapid prototype development, and gluing existing programs together, but I would not use it for large scale software projects, since in those types of programs maintainability becomes the real issue, and in my opinion python is relatively weak there.