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Ask HN: Is Python dying?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#31
post #5

That may be a view through the distorted HN lenses. Spend some time on Lambda the Ultimate and you'll think imperative programming is dying. Go is new and has lots of issues. It's annoying on many fronts and badly needs improvements in packaging area. It's good for some things and worse for others. JS is for frontend, because it's the only supported language. (although there are python-to-js compilers available if yo…

Reasonable Python is much younger than that. (Only fair, if you make an adjustment for reasonable js.)

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#32
I started using Python because everyone around me was starting to use it about a year ago. By now I'm rather proficient at it and it's replacing my primary language (PHP) to write quick scripts to run from the command line. In a few weeks I'll also be working on a web project in Python (where I'd normally have picked PHP).

I still use PHP and bash a ton, will use Java in school next semester, used C# during my internship, but Python is among my core tools right now. I notice that library support for Python is so, so much better than for PHP, making my life a lot easier at times.

As for Go, I still intend to look at it, at some point in the future. Basically like I intended to look at Python three or four years ago.

Javascript, yeah for in browsers.

Julia? I heard of it but I still think of the girl first and the language second. Never looked at it and don't see it come by that often. Data science you say? I thought R was hot there, a language I was going to look at somewhere in the next few months (my girlfriend will get it in university, good opportunity for me as well).

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which role? A general purpose programming language with an emphasis on readability?

Yes...but one that is also very fast, portable and with great generic programming.

Stuff like Numba greatly decreases the need for Julia.

C++17 also feels surprisingly dynamic, and together with Cython for easy Python-C++ interop also decreases the need for Julia.

And reports from the Julia world are not exactly encouraging - http://danluu.com/julialang/

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which role? A general purpose programming language with an emphasis on readability?

Yes...but one that is also very fast, portable and with great generic programming.

I had never considered Julia as a general purpose language. I assumed it was targetted mainly at data science etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#35
post #31
post #5

That may be a view through the distorted HN lenses. Spend some time on Lambda the Ultimate and you'll think imperative programming is dying. Go is new and has lots of issues. It's annoying on many fronts and badly needs improvements in packaging area. It's good for some things and worse for others. JS is for frontend, because it's the only supported language. (although there are python-to-js compilers available if yo…

Reasonable Python is much younger than that. (Only fair, if you make an adjustment for reasonable js.)

October 16, 2000

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#36
http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=python Showing 1-10 of 169,970 Python jobs

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=ruby Showing 1-10 of 128,305 Ruby jobs

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=java Showing 1-10 of 190,126 Java jobs

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=golang Showing 1-10 of 219 Golang jobs

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=julia Showing 1-10 of 206 Julia jobs

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=%22python+3%22 Showing 1-10 of 151 Python 3 jobs

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=%22python+2%22 Showing 1-10 of 141 Python 2 jobs

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java has gotten significantly better in recent years across the board. Python it's a mixed bag due to the 2 to 3 incompatibility transition, one step forward, one step back and some step are changes but not improvements.

Which parts of Python 3 do you regard as being worse than Python 2?

I know this is not the answer you seek but: adoption. Transition was a blunder reaching Perl proportions.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#39
post #12

Python occupies a niche that isn't going away any time soon: making it easy and natural to write readable, straightforward, more-or-less imperative, slightly boring code of the type you learned in CS 101. This is still a very practical way to solve many problems and I'd wager for most programmers it's still the easiest way to do things. Maybe it will always be. It's hard to imagine there'll be a generation of program…

At my work we recently needed to hire a developer. We gave them all a very basic problem to solve and told them "use any language, use any libraries". The idea was to get a feel for their coding style - do they comment their code, is their logic something the rest of the team could follow, will they address unmentioned issues, will they press for clearer requirements, etc.

A few notable solutions: 1) The C guy. Damn if he didn't blow that problem out of the water. I never want to be responsible for anything he coded. Entirely too complex, no comments, lord knows what side effects he put in place.

2) The java girl. Didn't finish. Didn't do any logging. Very logical separation of code. Lots of comments. Had to continually reference a text file in order to run the command to show output.

3) The .net guy who attacked the problem with Python. Imported a handful of libraries. Wrote 14 or 16 lines of code. Completely baffled that we would provide such an easy problem. When asked why he didn't use his strongest language, he laughed.

One of them got hired and won't have to write a single line of .net anything for a very long time.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#40
I don't know. As a single developer house, I have a behemoth of a project.

Started out with PHP, then used Python for the backend (php sucks as daemons). Expanded to NodeJS for real-time elements. Used JS exclusively for the front-end. When I found python not working as it should be for heavy concurrent tasks, I used Go.

So PHP, Python, NodeJS, Go, JS all for 1 project. Couple this with NoSQL, Postgres, Varnish, Nginx and being a linux sys-admin and throw in clustering, security and a whole lot of other things. Wow, something has to give.

4 months ago decided to learn Go. Now I'm almost at the point where I have a JS front-end and Go backend.

I regularly see complaints about Go having issues. I don't see this as the case. I went from PHP/Codeigniter MVC backend including sessions, validation, integration with nodejs using historyJS and a small JS footprint for the front-end SPA...

To a couple of days worth of work which involved grabbing GIN (the framework), make it do MVC, put in JWT, use GIN for validation and Gorilla/websockets for real-time.

There are many blogs, code samples on github, for a lot of different use-cases or to get the gist of how something is supposed to work. I havent yet found myself not being able to do what I need with Go.

I think what is the sticking point. A lot of developers want to import packages and just build the core of their app. I don't know. I find myself WANTING to build everything out because then I can trust that it will work and work in production. So if a library isn't available. Fine, I'll just build my own.

In fact, the net benefit for me, was that I no longer need to think about scaling my entire application. I made every facet of my old application into micro services that can now be clustered. In addition, the overhead for running Go is now very minimal. The outlay of $$$ each month dramatically went down vs running PHP/Python.

Finally yes, I understand that if I wanted to double down with Python or NodeJS, I could have probably achieved the same result. I'm sure someone will reply saying, why didn't you use X or why didn't you use Y. The fact is, I used Go. The barrier to entry to learn it was minimal to none. I hit the ground running with Go on day 3. Go has paid back lots of dividends and it continues to do so. All my new development is with Go and I don't miss any of the other languages and not only that, upgrading from 1.4 to 1.6 hasn't bothered me in the slightest. I hope that trend continues with 1.7 and 1.8 and beyond. Oh and getting http2, better GC and other goodies to boot. May that trend also continue.

I think in the next 5 years, things will be different. I think if Go starts to match the number of libraries Python has, it will be different. At this point, yes, Python may well be dying.

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