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Aside from having a two decade history of using C#, types is the only thing preventing us from going full Python. Even so, the dynamic types in Python are more often a benefit than a disadvantage because Python is so great at handling them automatic.

We build our employee database, and from there our IDM, from a singel XML file in a really shitty format + three txt files in even worse formats (they are single line output files from an old mainframe system predating sap). We used to do it in a rather complicated Microsoft SSIS workflow with a lot of C# services. All in all it’s a 30 minute nightly runtime. I recently replaced it with around 500 lines of Python and a 1-5 minute Runtime (sometimes at the beginning of a school year we’ll see changes to around 1000 positions).

Python eats the XML like it wasn’t shit. It takes things like terrible date formats, we’re talking the output of a SAP free-text box shitty, and ports then seamlessly into a SQL date field. This alone was a nightmare in C# and Python just does it.

Still, after two decades of strict types it feels dangerous.




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