Ask HN: What made you learn Python? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#21

Post by gatosufridor » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

Why not Ruby?

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#22

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

gatosufridor wrote: post #21

Why not Ruby?

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#23

Post by paulcole » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

dhruvkar wrote: post #17

I wanted to get SMS notifications from a constantly updated Google spreadsheet. Simplest way to work it and an SMS api was using Python.

I use Google Apps Script and Twilio for something pretty similar.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#24

Post by yesenadam » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 10:59 PM UTC

I downloaded Sage, and Sage uses it. I was getting into solving mathematical problems by setting them in the appropriate number system - like finding the perfect data structure for a problem, so the answer drops out. Then realized Cython is a zillion times faster (took a while to learn how to get it to run at full speed) and now use that for everything.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#25

Post by vram22 » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

vram22 wrote: post #15

I was working on Java at the time. While browsing tech sites, I came across Python. I think there was a good description of it as a VHLL, including the usual term "executable pseudocode"; also, there was a good online tutorial about Internet programming with Python, and I was new to both. Got hooked, and never looked back.

Forgot to mention: I came for the language, and stayed for the community.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#26

Post by thewileyone » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:45 AM UTC

Worked in a team that developed it's own tools for NeXTStep (yeah, that long ago) ...

Glen joined the team and holy shit Glen was awesome. Was scripting in PERL with ObjectiveC bindings until Glen looked over my shoulder and told me that was crap. So he wrote Python bindings for ObjectiveC over the weekend and made me learn Python.

Can't remember the version, but the only support came from Guido Van Rossum via email so that was a magical time.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#27

Post by TurboHaskal » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 11:07 AM UTC

The team hated Perl in an almost religious fashion (although they never worked with nor bothered to learn it) so we settled with Python. I must say the ones pushing for it weren't exactly our best programmers.

Note that I didn't have to "learn" Python. It brought nothing to the table other than a different syntax and concepts such as generators, iterators, metaclasses and list comprehensions were not new to me.

Fast forward a few years and while I admit that it probably has the best ecosystem a dynamic language has to offer, I still don't see the point of Python language-wise (disclaimer: I don't factor in implementations and ecosystems when talking about programming languages).

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#28

Post by fitba1969 » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 11:50 AM UTC

Used to use MATLAB for all data processing. Python was free and seemed to be gaining popularity. One day for analysing some data just decided let's see if I can do this in Python. Went from zero to a fully functioning script with many features in a few hours. I was hooked.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#29

Post by nvusuvu » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

Desire to automate manual processes that take our team months to complete otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: What made you learn Python?

#30

Post by eggie5 » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

all the good ML tools are in python