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Why People Should Learn Python

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Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#111

Post by neverminder »

greenspot wrote: post #18

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…

Rust should then get 6 stars judging from unparalleled excitement every news about it brings here. Rightfully so in my opinion. By the way, it's "Clojure", not "Closure" and what happened to Scala?

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#112

Post by enrmarc »

sedeki wrote: post #46
hacker_9 wrote: post #19

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. Ultimat…

What do you mean by inconsistent syntax?

Why does Python use methods for some functionality (e.g. list.index()) but functions for other (e.g. len(list))?

http://effbot.org/pyfaq/why-does-python-use-methods-for-some...

I guess is that.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#113

Post by enrmarc »

sjellis wrote: post #49
agounaris wrote: post #29

One my feeling about python is that is a great language for "reference". Probably everybody and write and read it and its already good enough for general programming. There are edges where other languages are better but still is a great language to establish communication among different types of developers

Yes, I've seen Python described as "everybody's second-favourite language". It's not the best at anything, but if your main requirement is a bunch of different people all need to be able to read and edit the same code then it's a good choice.

Couldn't we say the same thing about Ruby?

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#114

Post by TeMPOraL »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #37
greenspot wrote: post #18

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…

At a glance, it looks like all languages are reasonably well loved except PHP and Node.js (shouldn't this just be Javascript? Does having a different standard lib make it a different language?) I think that's due to people having flash backs to terribly written code in both languages. For example, PHP apps pre-2005 rarely if ever used frontend controllers, preferring instead to twine in configuration and helper funct…

With PHP, I'll agree, though with JS I think it's the reverse. At least my personal dislike for the language and the ecosystem grows with every new hot framework, build system, or other weird "must-have" link for the toolchain that Node people seem to create almost daily.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#115

Post by [deleted] »

K0nserv wrote: post #43

I switched to writing python as my main backend/scripting language with my new job. Previously I was using Ruby for most of this stuff with some Go. I must say that so far Python has been a vastly inferior experience for me. The languages are fairly similar all though I prefer the more talkative/english style of ruby and the use of functions over list and dict comprehension. The thing that really stands out to me tho…

[deleted]

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#116

Post by kozikow »

K0nserv wrote: post #43

I switched to writing python as my main backend/scripting language with my new job. Previously I was using Ruby for most of this stuff with some Go. I must say that so far Python has been a vastly inferior experience for me. The languages are fairly similar all though I prefer the more talkative/english style of ruby and the use of functions over list and dict comprehension. The thing that really stands out to me tho…

> Having used Rubygems and bundler pip feels like taking an enormous step back.

Personally I moved away from relying on language specific tools to do more than just "install library X" and manage my deployment and dependencies using docker. So far it works great for me.

> There seems to be fewer nice libraries

Depends on your domain. Ruby is very good at web development. Python is good at almost everything.

> Python libraries have lacking or hard to find documentation in many cases.

I didn't use Ruby, but JVM languages or Javascript don't come close to Python in the documentation coverage. Especially if you consider SO as a documentation, googling "how do I do X" in python usually gets you on the right track to the high quality solution. Javascript or Java SO post are more like a mine field in comparison.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#117

Post by ced »

dagw wrote: post #72
jnbiche wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try running a nested loop on a non-trivial example, and you can end up spending minutes in what would take milliseconds in any other language. Huh? Can you provide an example? There's nothing about writing nested loops in Python that is qualitatively different from other languages. > If you want to program in Python, you must get used to the functional paradigm. Not "should", "must". This is incorrect, much to my c…

Huh? Can you provide an example? Well he did mention numpy and obviously doing something that can be done in numpy with nested loops will be much much slower. However that is as much a case of numpy being really fast as python being slow. For example, just tested elementwise multiplication of two 10kX10k matrices and with numpy and numpy arrays it took ~350 ms vs ~15 seconds with a nested for loops and python lists.…

Could you post the Julia code? Unfortunately, you do have to make sure that the types are correctly inferred by the compiler in high-performance loops. Or maybe you used a global.

http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.4/manual/performance-...

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#118

Post by cdnsteve »

Python is in space [1].

There is such a large breadth of fields that it has been successful in. Web apps, data analysis, machine learning, micro controllers, etc.

It has a long track record for being stable, reliable and secure. The popularity over the years has been steady and with the recent addition of data science field and machine learning, it's seeing another growth spike.

In my opinion, it's a highly versatile and very productive language that seems to be able to handle just about any job or industry you can throw at it. I personally switched to it full time and love it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm08hXeuv-I

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#119

Post by zemanel »

kozikow wrote: post #116
K0nserv wrote: post #43

I switched to writing python as my main backend/scripting language with my new job. Previously I was using Ruby for most of this stuff with some Go. I must say that so far Python has been a vastly inferior experience for me. The languages are fairly similar all though I prefer the more talkative/english style of ruby and the use of functions over list and dict comprehension. The thing that really stands out to me tho…

> Having used Rubygems and bundler pip feels like taking an enormous step back. Personally I moved away from relying on language specific tools to do more than just "install library X" and manage my deployment and dependencies using docker. So far it works great for me. > There seems to be fewer nice libraries Depends on your domain. Ruby is very good at web development. Python is good at almost everything. > Python…

Did you take a look at pip-tools ? It allows dependency locking

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#120

Post by shakna »

dagw wrote: post #72
jnbiche wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try running a nested loop on a non-trivial example, and you can end up spending minutes in what would take milliseconds in any other language. Huh? Can you provide an example? There's nothing about writing nested loops in Python that is qualitatively different from other languages. > If you want to program in Python, you must get used to the functional paradigm. Not "should", "must". This is incorrect, much to my c…

Huh? Can you provide an example? Well he did mention numpy and obviously doing something that can be done in numpy with nested loops will be much much slower. However that is as much a case of numpy being really fast as python being slow. For example, just tested elementwise multiplication of two 10kX10k matrices and with numpy and numpy arrays it took ~350 ms vs ~15 seconds with a nested for loops and python lists.…

Based purely on my experience with native CPython, I have usually found for loops to be a bottleneck - and nested list comprehensions to be the saviour.

I wonder what the difference would look like then?

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