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Why People Should Learn Python

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Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#11

Post by BanzaiTokyo »

berntb wrote: post #3

Why is a beginner's introduction to one of the common scripting languages at the top of HN? Most everyone here should know at least one of the usual suspects (Ruby, Perl, Python, etc). They are all quite similar in capabilities. Is introduction to loops at the top, in an hour? Edit: The few newbies here which don't know a scripting language are hardly the ones voting this up... Edit 2: BanzaiTokyo is free to explain…

Python is very and increasingly popular and I guess the reason it is at the top is to recommend to the people who practice Perl or Ruby to take a look at this language as well.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#12

Post by PerfectElement »

berntb wrote: post #3

Why is a beginner's introduction to one of the common scripting languages at the top of HN? Most everyone here should know at least one of the usual suspects (Ruby, Perl, Python, etc). They are all quite similar in capabilities. Is introduction to loops at the top, in an hour? Edit: The few newbies here which don't know a scripting language are hardly the ones voting this up... Edit 2: BanzaiTokyo is free to explain…

I've been programming for 20 years and don't know any of those languages.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#13

Post by atemerev »

The person who wrote this obviously has "the hacker's mindset". He praises expressivity and malleability of the language.

Well, in this case it might be advisable to take a look at Perl. And never go back. Perl (especially Perl6) is hacker's paradise, where everything's true and nothing is forbidden.

As somebody who shares the same mindset, I truly enjoyed my years with Perl, and I occasionally return to this experience.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#14

Post by MerreM »

iagooar wrote: post #2

Now that I have a chance to ask: I've always found the def __init__ method with 4 (!) underscores one of the ugliest things I've seen in a programming language. Don't get me wrong: I like Python and know it's truly good, but __why__??

I believe it's part of the language design, a phrase you'll find quite a lot in Python language discussions, especially is more esoteric features is; "We're all consenting adults".

There are certain areas of the language which may not behave exactly the way you'd be expecting, if you're new to it.

These usually have an unusual syntax, which will cause you to find out more.

They're basically the mini-roundabouts of python.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Mini-roundabouts

If you know what you're doing you cruise straight over, but if for any reason you're unsure, you're forced to find out more before continuing.

It's not designed to stop you, because "We're all consenting adults", but that doesn't mean it's going to encourage you to do something that might be harmful.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#15

Post by wibr »

I first learned Python and then much later C, and for me at least learning Python first was very motivating because you can get things done so easily, due to the built-in batteries and the wealth of external libraries. Seeing that the computer needs less than a second for what would have taken me many hours of tedious work was pretty eye opening.

Learning C later on helped me understand some basic concepts better and being able to speed up Python e.g. using Cython can come in quite handy.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#16

Post by viach »

atemerev wrote: post #13

The person who wrote this obviously has "the hacker's mindset". He praises expressivity and malleability of the language. Well, in this case it might be advisable to take a look at Perl. And never go back. Perl (especially Perl6) is hacker's paradise, where everything's true and nothing is forbidden. As somebody who shares the same mindset, I truly enjoyed my years with Perl, and I occasionally return to this experie…

> is hacker's paradise

And support engineer's hell

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#17

Post by erelde »

berntb wrote: post #3

Why is a beginner's introduction to one of the common scripting languages at the top of HN? Most everyone here should know at least one of the usual suspects (Ruby, Perl, Python, etc). They are all quite similar in capabilities. Is introduction to loops at the top, in an hour? Edit: The few newbies here which don't know a scripting language are hardly the ones voting this up... Edit 2: BanzaiTokyo is free to explain…

From the guidelines:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [emphasis mine]

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#18

Post by greenspot »

Is it just my feeling or are there languages which are preferred on HN?

Indicators for languages which are liked by the HN community:

- Positive stories get many upvotes and are instantly at the top of HN

- Most comments are positive

- Frequent coverage on HN about the language

Indicators for languages which are not liked by the HN community:

- Rants get many upvotes and are instantly at the top of HN

- Most comments are negative about the language

- Rare coverage on HN

Applying those indicators, following languages should have these like-levels (on a range from 1 to 5):

  Python  *****
  Go      ****
  Node.js *
  C#/.NET ***
  Java    ***
  RoR     **
  Ruby    ***
  Elixir  ***
  Haskell ****
  Closure ***
  C       ****
  Rust    *****
  C++     ***
  PHP     *
  Swift   ****
This is just my feeling, happy to hear your perception. And this does not reflect my opinion about those languages in any way.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#19

Post by hacker_9 »

Why you shouldn't learn Python:

1. In-consistant syntax.

2. The language uses exceptions to control flow of logic.

3. Divided community, since Python 3+ included breaking changes to the standard.

4. Un-discoverable APIs. You better hope the documentation is bulletproof else the API could change in any which way during runtime.

5. Poor error messages. If an import goes wrong you are not told why, and so on.

6. Ultimately slow performance for anything marginally complex.

7. Poor tooling.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#20

Post by wiz21c »

PerfectElement wrote: post #12
berntb wrote: post #3

Why is a beginner's introduction to one of the common scripting languages at the top of HN? Most everyone here should know at least one of the usual suspects (Ruby, Perl, Python, etc). They are all quite similar in capabilities. Is introduction to loops at the top, in an hour? Edit: The few newbies here which don't know a scripting language are hardly the ones voting this up... Edit 2: BanzaiTokyo is free to explain…

I've been programming for 20 years and don't know any of those languages.

That's surprising! So which are the languages you use (I'd expect to not know any of them :-))
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