Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reasonable Python is much younger than that. (Only fair, if you make an adjustment for reasonable js.)
October 16, 2000
What was so unreasonable about 1.5? That was my first python and it worked perfectly fine.
Ask HN: Is Python dying?
281–290 of 369 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely dominant in finance? Do you have a source for that claim?
Actually that's probably not accurate now that I think about it. Python is mostly used by quants and people figuring out what trades to make, as well as for some of the internal business tools. Whereas the people building the actual exchanges are probably using Java or C++.
Can confirm, am a quant.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#283Python is the least-worst general purpose imperative not-performance-critical OO scripting language. It has lots of problems (weird scoping, community issues, roundabout docs, `''.join()`, crippled lambda, no variable declarations, some lousy naming, module distribution issues, yet more ways to do string formatting, whitespace-sensitive syntax instead of curlies+semis), but the alternatives have worse problems, so Py…
What's wrong with `''.join()`? It's fine as is, I think, same logic as '{}'.format().
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#284Let's look at Julia for example. Its currently gaining steam in numerics, machine learning other technical computing areas...I hypothesize this is compound growth. For general computing, what would happen when it gains static compilation and can be distributed easily on Linux/Windows, Mobile and then web (with Emscripten/web assembly). Then its as expressive if not more than python, easy to read/write and faster (unl…
It's really easy to get a huge growth rate if you start from a very small number.
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Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be pedantic, Clojure has nothing to do with CLOS. It does leverage JVM and lets you use objects and OOP patterns though.
So where do you think multi-methods and protocols come from?
Okay, TIL, still there's more OOP in Clojure beyond CLOS influences.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Though it is strong in data-heavy environments (with all it's issues nonetheless). Which is why numpy and scipy are so full-featured and pretty damn fast.
Techincally, Numpy and SciPy are C and Fortran extensions to Python, not Python code.
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Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#287For the past few years, many say java is dead, ruby is dead, nobody want C and etc, still today, individuals and business still continue using those language and invest new framework/plugin/tools for those language. So i pretty sure python is not dead. 'Dead' is for framework when community move from one framework to another.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually that's probably not accurate now that I think about it. Python is mostly used by quants and people figuring out what trades to make, as well as for some of the internal business tools. Whereas the people building the actual exchanges are probably using Java or C++.
"Finance" is such a broad term with respect to IT - you'll find anything if you look hard enough. The following is based on my experience only - I'm sure there will be lots on here with different experiences: * I've seen more C++/Java/C# than anything else, with a large legacy base of COBOL/RPG (yes, GMI, we're looking at you...). * Industrial-grade quant libs (for risk, P&L, models that need regulatory approval) ten…
Im an economist who loves to program (especially in Python, but I'm not married to it), and I detest Excel.
Where do I fit it?
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#289That 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…
Would it be possible to port it to the erlang-vm?
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 firs…
Massive library. That was Perl's big advantage. Why do more people use Python over Perl? F# isn't really cross-platform yet. Swift is 18 months old. Scala is a bit complicated for many and slow to compile. C# was a Windows only language for a long time, with Xamarin for those who really really need limited cross platform support. OCaml never gained much traction. If Microsoft had used it instead of a slightly different F#...
Once again, you're doing that dance. Do you think I'm learning anything here? Watch out for Go and Swift. These statically typed languages are better for large projects.
Please skip the part where you explain Python's optional typing.