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Ask HN: Is Python dying?

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261–270 of 369 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I think Rentrak in Portland is still an all Perl shop

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Rub…

You mean all those FP languages that happen to support OOP as well?

Lisp, Clojure - CLOS

OCaml - The O is for Objective, e.g. Objects

Scala, F# - Hybrid FP/OOP

Haskell - Type classes support polymorphism and extensibility.

Erlang - Message passing as envisioned by Smalltalk

So what are FP languages that have zero support for OOP concepts and are on the rise?

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#263
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…

Next year has always been the year that functional programming will take over the world. It's been like that since I started programming in the early 90s. While functional concepts have leaked into imperative languages, Haskell is the only pure functional language that so far has come close to breaking out although Lisp has also gotten close a few times. (see also next year will be the year of Linux on Desktop)

Pure FP might not have taken over the world.

But those that read my Java, C# and C++14 code, better know their way around lambda calculus.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#264
I've switched to Python a little while ago for the following use-cases, and couldn't be happier:

- Non-performance-critical command line tools for game-data export-pipelines that I previously wrote in C/C++: Python code is usually more compact, and everything I ever needed is in the standard library. If performance is critical I still prefer python to call out to minimal C or C++ tools which do the heavy-lifting.

- Replace native shell-scripts and Windows batch files with portable python scripts that run on Windows, Linux and OSX.

- Stitching together 3D content-creation-tools and command line tools, most DCC tools of have become python-scriptable in recent years.

- Code generation for C/C++ and shader code.

These are all very pragmatic and simple things, I don't care whether my python scripts are 'pythonic' or elegant, and I don't care about the 2 vs 3 debate. Python gets the job done, works everywhere, and I enjoy writing it because of its friendly syntax and powerful standard library.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#265
post #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=%22pyth…

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=cobol Showing 1-10 of 130,541 Cobol jobs. COBOL!!! You must also search for go programming language not golang or just go.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#266
post #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=%22pyth…

http://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=perl Showing 1-10 of 220,528 Perl jobs And you know, Perl is dead. Basically, Python gave a choice to a lot of people to either invest time into 3.x without any important improvements or to keep using 2.7 and invest time playing with other languages. Which in turn accelerated Python's decline and raised questions about it dying, promoting the idea even more. But there is no need to…

> Showing 1-10 of 220,528 Perl jobs

Not really. On page 18 you already have jobs like http://www.simplyhired.com/job/net-developer-job/compugain-l... were Perl is just used as an example for scripting languages.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#267
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?

Third option: like a JVM ML.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#268
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that Django and React make a great combination. You probably still want Django to handle server-side rendering for most of your site (unless you're a masochist). Django Rest Framework for the API, and React (or whatever) to handle the app-like parts.

Why not render client-side?

1. On the whole 'normal' websites with an overabundance of client-side rendering are in a kind of 'uncanny valley'. They nearly behave the way a normal server-side rendered site would but something always breaks whether it be the back button or link behaviour, caching/refreshing or something. So from the user's perspective it's often a bit off.

2. It's still more work from the developer's side. You have to implement stuff you get for free with server-side rendering. And currently (and for the foreseeable future IMHO) Python/Django is still simpler, more maintainable and nicer to work with. So I'd prefer to keep the client-side code where it belongs - the parts of the site that are more like an 'app' than a 'website'.

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#269
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Julia just want to replace Python as the glue interface, it seems to have no chance winning...What it can do, as a glue layer, that Python cannot do?

It's not meant to compete with Python as a glue language. The point is that you can start using Julia right now and be productive by calling other languages' libraries to fill in the holes.

The questions is why would I do that? Because Julia is new?

Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?

#270

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…

> displacing PHP (which obviously no one ever uses 21% of the Internet uses Wordpress, which is built with PHP.

In this case (Wordpress), PHP is used by end users, not by programmers.
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