Re: RFC: adding pytest as a supported test framework

On Thu, Jun 13, 2024 at 11:19 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> I wonder if we should be checking out some of the other newer
> languages that were mentioned upthread. It feels like going to
> Python here will lead to having two testing infrastructures with
> mas-o-menos the same capabilities, leaving us with a situation
> where people have to know both languages in order to make sense of
> our test suite. I find it hard to picture that as an improvement
> over the status quo.

As I see it, one big problem is that if you pick a language that's too
new, it's more likely to fade away. Python is very well-established,
e.g. see

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

That gives Python a rating of 15.39%; vs. Perl at 0.69%. There are
other things that you could pick, for sure, like Javascript, but if
you want a scripting language that's popular now, Python is hard to
beat. And that means it's more likely to still have some life in it 10
or 20 years from now than many other things.

Not all sites agree on which programming languages are actually the
most popular and I'm not strongly against considering other
possibilities, but Python seems to be pretty high on most lists, often
#1, and that does matter.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com