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Ask HN: Is Python dying?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#211

Post by bendmorris »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #162

There are a lot of great comments in here already but I'll add my 2c anyhow because it's something I have been thinking a lot about lately. Python is my absolute favorite language without a doubt. But Python is dying for ME I think there is a lot of value in having front and back end code in the same language. Python is significantly slower than JavaScript and I just don't want to have to run 2x the number of servers…

>Python is significantly slower than JavaScript

I don't think there's anything inherent about either language that makes it faster or slower than the other, and it's not really fair to compare one high-performance implementation (Node) with another specific implementation (CPython) when there are other options. For example, have you compared Node vs. PyPy? In my experience they're very close.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#212

Post by bjwbell »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #198
zzzcpan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was interpreted pretty much correctly, except for the Perl part, which I should clarify. Perl is definitely dead, I think most people know that. The link was posted to illustrate that other links from that site were painting incorrect picture.

How is a tool like Perl dead when it's still heavily used on hundreds of thousands of machines all over the world? Is C dead as well? I would say, a tool is dead when it's no longer in wide use. Perl is hardly in that category quite yet.

It's dead because new projects aren't started in Perl unlike C.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#213

Post by crimsonalucard »

Don't trust any of the statements here. People are just responding with qualitative predictions and observations of the tiny little programming microcosms they dwell in.

No one here can produce an accurate prediction of the stock market anymore than they can predict the future of python. The thing with stocks though is at the very least they can look at a pricing trend line. People responding to you here aren't even looking at any quantitative data.

See the data here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_programming_language...

Is python dying?

The data says "Maybe?"

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#214

Post by TylerE »

normac wrote: post #54
Gratsby wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of my favorite pieces of code I've written is a 150 line Python script I made to solve a really ugly text processing problem. I have tried to use it as a code sample when talking to potential employers, but it backfires because it makes the original problem look so simple that they wonder why I bothered to send it.

I once wrote a custom report generator that could pair basically arbitrary input formats (pluggable, I think by the time I was done I'd written importers for CSV, fixed width, and JSON data) and output custom PDF output, with fully-user definable formatting/elements - using XML "templates" just because I didn't want to write a custom parser. Included loops, if statements, etc, and some pretty fancy output features (e.g. output N records per page, with custom sorting, headers/footers/etc). Used ReportLab for the PDF generation. Whole thing was under 1k lines of Python 2.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#215

Post by windlep »

Yes, Python is dying, that's why it just moved up in the Tiobe rankings to #5, displacing PHP (which obviously no one ever uses): http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

It's dominance of science is why Python has 25% science talks this year at PyCon, and why we see articles like: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3012442/application-develop...

But yes, if you didn't know any languages, then of course you should invest in an immature language with no mature libraries for the tasks you need to complete, because you were given a few months of extra runway time by your boss to fill-in the library ecosystem instead of getting your job done. We'll ignore that PyPy places you damn close to Go in terms of performance (except with mature proven libs), and that usually your task won't be CPU-bound anyways (the GIL release on I/O tasks)....

Why do troll questions like this even hit the front page of HN?

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#216

Post by davidw »

No, it's just pining for the fjords.

People still use Perl and Tcl and Cobol. You'll be fine with Python if it's a good fit for what you're doing. It's a solid language with a solid community.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#217

Post by viraptor »

melling wrote: post #196
viraptor wrote: 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…

When people say dying, they never mean it's just going to disappear. The hit-and-run on Go being a new 7 year old language seems unfair. It has great performance and has proven itself in production. There's a lot more competition for computer languages. It might end up like Perl. More people use Perl today than 15 years ago but its importance has waned. You really haven't addressed the issue. You simply did that danc…

The age makes a big difference for at least these reasons:

- given I have a problem, how likely is it that it's a problem in the runtime nobody saw before?

- given I want to do X, how likely is it that there's a library doing it already present? (and how likely that there's one established library rather than 10 trivial attempts?)

- if I can't find a solution to X, how likely is it that there's a solution in the first link on google? (and how likely is it that it still applies to current version?)

These have everything to do with the maturity and popularity of a language.

The iPhone / Android move is exactly what I meant about predicting popularity being like stockmarket. You've got as much information as the next person normally. If you believe the logic was misguided and you knew better, I assume you made lots of money as one of the first people to invest in the right ecosystem, right? Unless you have the weight to move the whole ecosystem, you can just choose the right solution for yourself - and most of the time it's going to depend on popularity.

Scala, F#, Kotlin, OOC, Swift, C#, OCaml have performance and type inference, and that's just some more popular ones. Python didn't have a problem because of them. (and 3 of them have a massive amount of libraries ready to be used)

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#218

Post by Moto7451 »

hoodoof wrote: post #183
abrookewood wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol .. It's still pretty shocking. I know lots of programmers, including some that used to write lots of Perl, and none of them are still working on it. Those job numbers are crazy.

Could it be that there's so many open Perl jobs because there are no programmers to fill them?

There are a still Perl shops out there. ZipRecruiter (where I work) and Booking.com are probably the biggest Perl shops in terms of Perl Dev headcount but I could be unaware of another company that's as big or bigger. There are a number of small to medium size companies in LA that are primarily Perl based and The Rubicon Project has a bit of Perl on the web side and C++ and Java for their ad network. Perl isn't dead, it's just not the hot new kid on the block by a long shot.

As a point of perspective, there are still VB6 shops out there. That's way more "dead" than Perl or Python, but so long as the checks still clear...

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#219

Post by Veratyr »

BuckRogers wrote: post #171
scrollaway wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP has argued otherwise. PyPI sampling is not random. It is heavily influenced by automatic downloads and such and completely ignores that most simple 2.x libs / non-3.3-tagged libs will work just fine on python 3. In other words, it is neither random nor representative of python 3 usage, failing the premise you yourself mentioned. There's no easy way to determine Python 3 usage overall. Your best bet is to go around…

>So maybe CloudShareBuzzr Inc. is using Python 2.7 internally, but they don't produce anything open source so it doesn't affect the rest of the ecosystem. It does matter because that means if you ever want to do it as a job, you HAVE to learn Python2 for that gig at CloudShareBuzzr. Paying your bills is always going to top using "the latest version" of anything. I'm not sure why people ignore or miss that point. Pyth…

I don't believe 2 and 3 are different enough that this theoretical company would turn someone away for being experienced in 3 rather than 2.

Learn that print doesn't need parens anymore, a few renamed modules, that Python 2 str is mostly equivalent to Python 3 bytes and Python 2 unicode is mostly equivalent to Python 3 str and you're most of the way there.

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