Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why did Python win?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 856 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#701

Post by fulafel »

r_thambapillai wrote: post #53

Python ended up 'specializing' in data contexts, thanks to Numpy / Pandas, and as a result, ended up becoming the first exposure to programming than anyone doing data stuff had. That was millions of people. In that space, it had no competitors. Ruby ended up 'specializing' in web dev, because of Rails. But when Node and React came out, Ruby on Rails had to compete with Nodejs + React / MERN as a way of building a web…

> Python ended up 'specializing' in data contexts

There's a big sub-continent of data stuff in the Python ecosystem, but Python the language hasn't specialized there I'd argue - it has enabled the 3rd party number crunching and data libraries like NumPy and Pandas, but not specialized over other domains where Python is used.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#702

Post by izacus »

reducesuffering wrote: post #93
izacus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a winner, it's still named "Java".

Based on what? https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/2 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=python%2Cjava

Based on the amount of software written in it.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#703

Post by Lammy »

psunavy03 wrote: post #680
nijave wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Googled it, apparently it comes from this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_soup

OK, I get it, but when I'm trying to write automation for a shop that isn't natively Python-savvy (long story short, it made sense when I started a side project which evolved), if I use that library and ever move on, I now have to document in comments or somewhere WTF "BeautifulSoup" means. Because of some rando's inside joke they thought was funny.

This is actually one reason I prefer the Ruby ecosystem — whimsy is still welcome. The world has enough Noun Manager projects.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#704

Post by deaddodo »

> My impression is that in the ‘00s, Python and Ruby were both relatively new, dynamically typed, “English-like” languages. And for a while these languages had similar popularity.

Your impression is false. In the 00s, Python was a slowly growing language that had a few niches that it was extremely popular in. Meanwhile Ruby (well, Rails in particular) was the Next Big Thing and immensely popular, especially for new Web Applications.

What happened is that Rails' schtick got less unique as more MVC frameworks were created for other languages (CakePHP, Laravel, Django, etc) and then Node was released. JavaScript/TypeScript has filled all of the same areas Rails used to and is even more accessible so is the new Next Big Thing. Meanwhile, Python just continued steadily growing and a few of it's niches have become very important to businesses (Data Science) and the tech sphere, in general (Machine Learning); exponentially increasing it's uptake.

So, while RoR is still very popular in web shops, it's more common to be seen in legacy codebases (3-5+years or older) and less so in newer ones (where Node/Deno has taken it's place). Python, on the other hand, is very popular in two very greenfield spheres that are continuing to grow fast.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#705

Post by globular-toast »

AdamH12113 wrote: post #71

The way I (somewhat hazily) remember it, Python was mainly competing with Perl as a scripting language, not Ruby as an application/web language. I started hearing about Ruby years later when Ruby on Rails drove the Web 2.0 movement, but that feels like a different era to me. Eric S. Raymond wrote an article[1] in 2000 about his experience trying Python after spending a lot of time with Perl. I'll quote some of it her…

The quotation is so true. There was a "Python WTFs" posted recently which was fun but the thing is you could work with Python successfully for years without ever running into them. Contrast that with other languages where you need to learn the WTFs before you can stop writing buggy code.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#706

Post by takeda »

As someone who learn about those two in late 00's when they both still were and Rails was hot.

I believe it was because python prioritized terseness and at the same time readability, while ruby prioritized cleverness often it was harder to understand someone else's code or even your own after a while.

That was at least the reason I avoided ruby, it felt like a descendent of perl.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#707

Post by takeda »

lordnacho wrote: post #149
aidenn0 wrote: post #31

I first encountered Python around 2000. At the time Perl was more popular in the circles I frequented, and TCL probably about as popular as Python (eggdrop[1] notwitstanding), but Python was growing steadily. I encountered Ruby in the late '00s (as others have noted it made its english-language debut almost a decade after Python started) and Lua was another contender during this time. My memory is that, at least outs…

> The syntax is almost a dead-ringer for pseudo code. This is the big one. You look at it, and you think you know what it's going to do. The indentation rules also means things look predictable rather than being a mess of brackets.

This was the reason what made me chose python over ruby.

I wanted a language that I would come back to and still understand what I was trying to do. Ruby looked like its spirit animal was perl.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#708

Post by sharts »

Python had been around much longer than that. But it was mostly in the realm of scientific things.

Ruby became popular when Rails exploded and everyone got into Web 2.0.

Lots of other frameworks came out after that and there was no other killer Ruby apps. But that doesn’t mean that the Ruby ecosystem weren’t doing great things. Just no “big hits”.

Around that time NodeJS dropped and everything moved there. Python still had its niche in science/data.

Computer Science departments started offering their intro CS classes in Python instead of Lisp. So it is no surprise why it exploded even more.

A lot of Ruby-ism has found itself in Elixir. Which seems to slowly be gaining traction. All is not dead.

It’s always just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

JS has always been a dumpster fire or garbage heap but it was in the right place at the right time. That’s the end of that.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#710

Post by sharts »

rout39574 wrote: post #250
Loeffelmann wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. This is so hilariously wrong in python though

So I imagine you have that perspective because you started less than 20 years ago. In some ways the idea of the Pythonic Way to do things evolved in opposition to Perl's vigorous advocacy of More Than One Way. Python has been really winning for some time, so it's natural that its ideological discipline has grown ragged. The crop of kids who value options above consistency don't have the scars of the Perl age to infor…

I think Python has some of the worst API documentation I’ve ever read.

Even Java puts it to shame and that is sad

Post reply on HN