In part 1 I made the very brief argument that compiling sucks. I really like that cartoon since there is a lot of truth to it. Compiling sucks mainly because it breaks flow. There has been several tries to fix it by lowering the time it takes to compile but in the end, it’s still the same loop: write, compile, “debug”.
There is another layer to it as well, one that dynamic languages doesn’t necessarily imply: Developing a program should be having a running program that can be used while it is being written. This is one of the pillars of agile programming. Step one in achieving this goal is to separate the UI from the backend. Web is a natural way to do this.
Django comes very close to achieving this with it’s automatic reloading on change, but the biggest problem is that it’s not able to automatically migrate the most basic model changes. On the other hand Django has many other things going for it so it is by no means a bad choice. But there might be a better one lurking in the dark.
