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Go compared to Python for small scale system administration scripts and tools

Accepted submission by Anonymous Coward at 2020-01-27 19:00:26
Software

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/SysadminGoVsPython [utoronto.ca]

The first useful property Python has is that you can't misplace the source code for your deployed Python programs. Unless you do something very peculiar, what you deploy is the source code (well, a version of it). With Go you deploy a compiled artifact, which means that you may someday have to find the source code and then try to match your compiled binary up against some version of it. Of course your deployed Python program can drift out of sync with the master copy in your version control repository, but sorting that out only requires use of diff.

Closely related to this is that Python code is generally simple for people to modify and re-deploy. Modest Python scripts and tools are likely to be only a single .py file, which you can edit and copy around, and even somewhat bigger ones are likely to just be a directory that can be copied. Deploying Go code requires not just the correct source code but also a Go development environment and the knowledge of how to build Go programs from source. With Python, you can even try things out by just modifying the deployed version in place, then back-port your eventual changes to the official master copy in your version control system.


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