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Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

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Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#101

Post by tim333 »

LexiMax wrote: post #85
spenrose wrote: post #63

1. Python was designed by testing syntax with novice users to see what they could adopt easily.[1] > 90% of current Python users weren’t born when it was created. They all had to learn, and Python is the easiest language to learn because Guido and his teammates, unlike $LANGUAGE_DESIGN_GOD, approach the problem as experimental scientists rather than auteurs. 2. Python is conceptually compact, dominated by hash tables…

I feel like if #1 was done today, there is no way on god's green earth that whitespace would be used for code blocks. It is far and away the most common footgun novices run into when I'm answering questions about why their code doesn't work.

#1 helps make Python maybe the most readable language which is probably more important than some minor hassles formatting it.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#103

Post by zahlman »

netcraft wrote: post #6

I think the reason python won was that it was easy to learn and read and was batteries included. vs perl: People need to solve their problems, not fight with syntax Theres a lot of network effects as well. The more people were using it, the more people will use it.

Python was batteries included, in the standard library, in an era where putting those kinds of things in the standard library made sense.

Now there's tons of stuff they're deathly afraid of removing, that they would never remotely consider adding if it weren't already there. (If you don't believe me, have a flip through proposals on discuss.python.org for new additions. People think of Python as a language that's constantly adding and changing stuff and inadvertently causing breakage as a result, but it's actually very conservative relative to the volume of proposals.)

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#104

Post by zahlman »

clay_shirky wrote: post #93
fud101 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl had charm, it was respected by hackers for the joy it brought people who 'got' it. It still remains a beautiful language that I regret not learning due to having a superior taste. Python had none of it. I still don't understand how it won, stealing the halo of a language while having nothing of the sort. The only argument you can make is boring is better imho.

Perl hacker who tried to switch to Ruby before adopting Python here: Of _course_ boring is better. How could it not be? If you are trying to solve a problem, the last thing you want to be thinking about is the language itself. The language you adopt to code up a solution should force you to think clearly, but no more than that. Executable pseudocode is as close to an ideal state as you can get for a high-level langua…

Mostly right, but

> By the turn of the century, it was clear that python 3 was a better plan for the future than perl 6.

Work on Python 3 wasn't even announced until 2006, and Perl 6 in 2000.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#105

Post by zahlman »

madduci wrote: post #17
netcraft wrote: post #6

I think the reason python won was that it was easy to learn and read and was batteries included. vs perl: People need to solve their problems, not fight with syntax Theres a lot of network effects as well. The more people were using it, the more people will use it.

I don't believe the "syntax win" scenario. Python is also ugly, due to the required indentation, like yaml. I believe more in the ecosystem, specifically how the computer vision and machine learning movements have adopted python extensively as frontend language (the heavy weightlifting is still doing in C++). The exploit of numpy has brought many many use cases into the language as well.

There are all sorts of other arguments people make, but it's frankly incomprehensible to me that some people find indentation-based block syntax "ugly" and the alternatives not so. I must wonder if this extends as far as not indenting code in braced languages.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#106

Post by zahlman »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #98

One contributor that I don't see mentioned elsewhere: For many many python users, their only touchpoint for the language is reading and writing it. Python gets a lot of grief from the perspective of people who are frustrated because they didn't start off using virtual environments and now their global python package namespace is a nightmare. Legit criticisms, but for many non-developer python users those problems are…

> Python gets a lot of grief from the perspective of people who are frustrated because they didn't start off using virtual environments and now their global python package namespace is a nightmare.

I never got to the "nightmare" stage before learning about venvs.

But it's still nice sometimes to have an environment ready to go full of popular, non-conflicting things to play around with a REPL in.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#107

Post by bb88 »

spenrose wrote: post #79
spenrose wrote: post #63

1. Python was designed by testing syntax with novice users to see what they could adopt easily.[1] > 90% of current Python users weren’t born when it was created. They all had to learn, and Python is the easiest language to learn because Guido and his teammates, unlike $LANGUAGE_DESIGN_GOD, approach the problem as experimental scientists rather than auteurs. 2. Python is conceptually compact, dominated by hash tables…

I forgot two, er, three: 9. Python got lucky that its inevitable screwups (Python3) didn’t quite kill it. 10. Swift and Kotlin both define programming as serving the compiler (specifically LLVM) rather than serving the coder’s problem . (I haven’t discussed Rust so far since it isn’t attempting to compete with 98% of Python use cases, but if you squint you can see it as going one step further than Swift and Kotlin an…

Rust isn't so much "competing" as it is "complimentary" to python. This is very much how python was billed originally as a scripting language for "C" in it's early days.

The slow parts of your python program can be rewritten in rust or C, your choice. So refreshing.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#108

Post by qcnguy »

spenrose wrote: post #79
spenrose wrote: post #63

1. Python was designed by testing syntax with novice users to see what they could adopt easily.[1] > 90% of current Python users weren’t born when it was created. They all had to learn, and Python is the easiest language to learn because Guido and his teammates, unlike $LANGUAGE_DESIGN_GOD, approach the problem as experimental scientists rather than auteurs. 2. Python is conceptually compact, dominated by hash tables…

I forgot two, er, three: 9. Python got lucky that its inevitable screwups (Python3) didn’t quite kill it. 10. Swift and Kotlin both define programming as serving the compiler (specifically LLVM) rather than serving the coder’s problem . (I haven’t discussed Rust so far since it isn’t attempting to compete with 98% of Python use cases, but if you squint you can see it as going one step further than Swift and Kotlin an…

Kotlin didn't target LLVM at all when it was designed, that feature came much later. The primary target for Kotlin is and always was the JVM. And Kotlin was designed with usability in mind from day one, that was the justification for it. Weird to say Kotlin define programming as serving the compiler. The compiler bends over backwards to serve the user.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#109

Post by zahlman »

dataminded wrote: post #91

Python was easy to read and write. Network effects did the rest. Perl6 was a much greater mess than Python3. I'm more surprised that Ruby didn't do better.

> I'm more surprised that Ruby didn't do better.

As you say,

> Network effects did the rest.

In an alternate set of universes, Ruby has Python's current position, and you are wondering why Python didn't take off. (But I suspect Ruby evolved fairly differently in those cases.) The universes where both are popular are much rarer.

Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?

#110

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

zahlman wrote: post #106
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #98

One contributor that I don't see mentioned elsewhere: For many many python users, their only touchpoint for the language is reading and writing it. Python gets a lot of grief from the perspective of people who are frustrated because they didn't start off using virtual environments and now their global python package namespace is a nightmare. Legit criticisms, but for many non-developer python users those problems are…

> Python gets a lot of grief from the perspective of people who are frustrated because they didn't start off using virtual environments and now their global python package namespace is a nightmare. I never got to the "nightmare" stage before learning about venvs. But it's still nice sometimes to have an environment ready to go full of popular, non-conflicting things to play around with a REPL in.

I wonder why activating a venv ended up being implemented as a script you source (updates env vars in the current process) and deactivate (puts them back) rather than being something that puts you in a subshell (detects your current shell and re-invokes it with new vars).

subshells would let you nest venvs so you could have a "sane defaults" venv, and then you could descent into madness with another "wacky experiment" venv, and to return to sanity you'd just exit the subshell. As it is, deactivating takes you all the way out to the system package namespace (or maybe you can nest them, not sure, but it's up to the venv implementation and not your OS to restore the intermediate env).

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