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Ask HN: Is Python dying?

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251–260 of 369 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elixir is promising. http://elixir-lang.org/

And really enjoyable... That's what really counts right?

Couple that with Phoenix (which looks and acts like most other MVC frameworks [and has good docs]), and we have a win I think.

And yes, it's quite fun (and mind-bending at the same time, in a good way).

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#252
post #152
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Julia is not even at 1.0 yet, and will be full of holes until at least then. It's still a wonderful language for technical/scientific computing, but you don't want it to be your only language if you have to make diverse real things.

Couldn't have said it better myself. That's almost the complete opposite of Python, which has the ugliness of real world use (eg, 2.7 vs 3), but also has those thousands or real world hardened packages.

Wow, this got more downvoted than I've had in a long time!

I'm pretty sure that this is an uncontroversial view so I'm a little surprised, especially since I work in this field.

Enlighten me, Julia fans?

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#253
post #75

I, for one, look forward to the day I have Python in my frontend. Browser support for ! Viva la revolution! I would need so much less migraine medicine that the pharma industry would lobby against it.

That day was 15+ yrs ago. Back in the IE4/5 days with ActivePerl and/or ActivePython installed you could do just that (along with VBScript). It also allowed you to use them in ASP pages too.

eg: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms974552.aspx

http://www.icodeguru.com/WebServer/Python-Programming-on-Win...

Apparently Perl tended to work better than Python though due to not being as picky about whitespace in an HTML script element :)

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#254
post #174
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clojure and Scala have gotten close as well. I've seen Scala in use at scale at both universities and corporations. Clojure is being used in production by at least a few well known companies, too. Both have the primary benefit of being backed by the JVM.

Scala seems to have some momentum. I've wondered if the companies that have adopted it are using it like jvm haskell or a just a better java?

Verizon is one of the bigger scala shops (a few hundred scala programmers on a "project") and is much closer to the functional side than a better Java. However, micro services and good library support mean some of the less experienced teams (in FP) use it more of Java++. Both are very pleasant to maintain/work on though.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#255
I've only been using Python for 2 months now. I'm coming from a Ruby, Java, Node background. The things I don't understand about Python and what I miss the most from those other languages is a solid tool chain. From package management down to the test runners. I miss Ruby gems, Bundler, Rack, and Gaurd tools. I miss Maven and the plethora of plugins. I miss NPM.

Pip is just OK. It feels like it's missing something. Could be a simple lack of experience still. I haven't found anything like Gaurd yet and yet to find a replacement for rack and NPM 's simple package.json. There is setup.py but it feels harder and wrapped in mystery still and doesn't work universally the same for Python 2 and 3 which I have been causing some road blocks and extra cycles being wasted.

Most of all I hate the backward compatibility issues of Python 2 to 3. I rarely have issues running older Ruby or Java code in newer versions of the language. It seems ridiculous that it's been a little over 7 years and people are still fighting with issues between Python 2 and 3 and you still need to pick a version to use. Sure you can code around it, but why the interpreter doesn't handle backward compatibility with deprecation statements is just amazing to me. This isn't a new thing. Languages like Java and Ruby do it as do plenty of others I'm sure if you wanted to make a syntax change you can handle the code in the interpreter and issue warnings to uograde them without breaking all old code bases.

But any ways, I digress, I don't think Python is going anywhere. Too many people and companies use it. It's got a lot of good libraries and and if you just start with Python 3 it's language is just like any other programming language. It's got some things you have to get used to that are unique to it but in the end, you can make it do what you need.

I personally think Ruby allows for nicer looking code and readability, and NodeJS has a far better Eco system. Hell, Languages like Elixir feel like a nice mixture of both with the huge added benefits of being highly parallel at the VM layer.

PyPy seems like a better place to invest resources since the JIT can really speed things up.

That's my 2 cents.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#256
I just got into Python, as a biologist. I'm happy I did it because now the entire large healthcare company I work for (or at least the research department) is switching from Matlab to Python. I have never heard the name Julia before here. Could be because I'm a biologist.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#257
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…

My prediction is that one day some alternative Python interpreter (Stackless, or GIL-less, or which compiles ahead of time to machine code, or something like that) will go from being merely an interesting concept to a dominant runtime. Python is such an excellent language, and it only has a small handful of elements holding it back from being even better. I feel like eventually something has to give, and either there…

Object-oriented languages are Dead Men Walking due to the problem of global mutable state management in any medium- to large-sized codebase, coupled with dependency/inheritance hell, leading to complexity hell, leading to geometric progression of tech debt. Compounding this is the lack of good unit test suites across the board, meaning that even if you write absolutely perfectly tested and maintainable Python (or Ruby, or Java, etc.) code, you still are stuck using libraries that have not been written with that in mind.

And yes, I'm talking broadly about the rise of FP.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be aware that PyPI isn't a great way to get accurate statistics. One of the reasons is when tox tests via a matrix, Python 2.7 is usually the first python listed, and if it fails then Python > 3 will not be tested. Also, it'll reuse libraries from the pip download cache. I don't doubt that python 2.7 accounts for the majority of the downloads, but I sincerely doubt 2.7 usage is at ~85%. 2.6 usage is probably almost e…

Be aware that PyPI isn't a great way to get accurate statistics. You can't just ignore a bunch of statistics because they aren't convenient to you; that's not how maths works. Statistical sampling is based on the premise that your sample is randomized from the total population; I would argue that the stats from pypi represent a reasonable random sample of python users around the world. Certainly, you can argue otherw…

As others have mentioned the PyPI statistics aren't random at all. They're a count of downloads based on user agents. The points I mentioned above were discussions I had with the maintainer of PyPI (Donald Stufft) who also recognises that aggregated counts from PyPI are not an effective measure.

There are no good stats that give an accurate representation about usage % of each python version. PyPI is the only proxy we have, and that is skewed by a number of factors (two of which I mentioned). The overall trend is probably accurate, but exact percentages certainly are not.

My like or dislike for python 2 or 3 has nothing to do with my comment upthread. I was simply stating a number of facts about the data that people can take or leave as they like. It was not "convenient" for me to share those facts. I simply thought people might want to be aware that there's nothing scientific about the aggregated percentages.

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