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Why People Should Learn Python

iluxonchik.github.io

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Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#141

Post by dagw »

ced wrote: post #131
dagw wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit I don't really know that much Julia and basically wrote naive MATLAB code (and I wanted to make it as close as possible to my python code): s=10000; a=ones(s,s); b=ones(s,s); c=zeros(s,s); tic(); for i in 1:s for j in 1:s c[i,j]=a[i,j]*b[i,j] end end toc(); Obviously in real code I'd simple write c=a.*b and get basically the same performance as numpy

Tarrosion is right, on my machine, putting the code inside a function is 10X faster, and then swapping the order of the loops gives another 10X improvement: function f(s) a=ones(s,s); b=ones(s,s); c=zeros(s,s); tic(); for j in 1:s for i in 1:s c[i,j]=a[i,j]*b[i,j] end end toc(); return c end Note that you also might have to run the function twice, because the first time JIT-compilation kicks in. Julia 0.5 also now au…

Thanks. To both you and Tarrosion.

Guess I need to take some time at some point to sit down and actually learn 'proper' Julia.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#142

Post by whyever »

verbatim wrote: post #103
didymospl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8. Global Interpreter Lock in CPython

This isn't an issue with the language, it's an issue with the common implementation of the language. It will be remedied by either fixing CPython, or by switching to a different implementation. (If neither happens, then I guess it isn't really a problem.)

> This isn't an issue with the language, it's an issue with the common implementation of the language.

There is no formal definition of the language. It is defined by the C implementation. So I'm not sure how meaningful that distinction is.

> If neither happens, then I guess it isn't really a problem.

Or people give up on Python and use another language.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#143

Post by yoz-y »

Rotareti wrote: post #58
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…

>3. Divided community, since Python 3+ included breaking changes to the standard. I'm using Python since about half a year and for all I did this wasn't an issue. I just started with 3 and had the feeling everything around me was 3 as well. 3 was released in '08.

We are hitting the 2/3 divide constantly. In our software we try to support both (for plugins). But it is a mess especially if you want to load interpreters to both at the same time. It is also near impossible to make somebody update from 2 to 3 in the scientific community.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#144

Post by iluxonchik »

enriquto wrote: post #94

The "namecount" example is rather silly though. It can be solved by a shell script much shorter than one line (sort|uniq -c).

Hey there! I've answered a similar observation in the comment section of the blog :)

> Of course it can be done all with command-line tools, but the point was not to show you how you can count and sort word occurrences. I just wanted to show that it's possible to include Python scripts in your "command line workflow". I wanted to give a simple example that would give you a taste of the idea :)

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#145

Post by [deleted] »

yoz-y wrote: post #139
dTal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this complaint. Whitespace is included when you copy something. What's the problem? Admittedly it is mildly annoying when someone decides to use some random number of spaces for indentation, and you have to fix it to make it match the rest of your code (my preferred editor, Geany, has a feature for this). We should all just use tabs. But "very hard"?

The web collapses whitespace so if the code is not in tags you are stuck. This is quite often a case where comment systems were not intended to share code.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#146

Post by dood »

barrkel wrote: post #108
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…

I find chained enumerator / block style code much easier to write and understand than list / dict comprehensions too. It's probably the single biggest thing that I don't like about Python; lambdas are simply too awkward, but lambdas + monadic transformations are probably my primary mental abstractions for writing software these days.

Could you give an example of that?

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#147

Post by [deleted] »

barrkel wrote: post #108
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…

I find chained enumerator / block style code much easier to write and understand than list / dict comprehensions too. It's probably the single biggest thing that I don't like about Python; lambdas are simply too awkward, but lambdas + monadic transformations are probably my primary mental abstractions for writing software these days.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#148

Post by empthought »

barrkel wrote: post #108
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…

I find chained enumerator / block style code much easier to write and understand than list / dict comprehensions too. It's probably the single biggest thing that I don't like about Python; lambdas are simply too awkward, but lambdas + monadic transformations are probably my primary mental abstractions for writing software these days.

With itertools and functools you should be able to program in that style just fine. You'll likely want to give your lambdas names with a "def", but you should be doing that anyway.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#149

Post by rtpg »

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…

I think a lot of this is due to these problems being solved through standardised processes in python.

For example, with dependencies, production dependencies and dev dependencies are defined through two requirements files: requirements.txt and requirements-dev.txt. requirements-test.txt for testing. No need for tooling, just pass those into pip.

Most python tooling is pretty limited in scope but works well. From my side, I've had more trouble with "turing complete tooling" that ruby has offered me. I have not had to use ruby a great deal though.

I think the difference in philosophy between the two communities is that python stuff will usually value ease of debugging/implementation over "ease of use". Most things in pyhton and its echosystem are straightforward. None of this "Library A adding methods to classes of Library B" stuff (not that it's impossible). Of course, you then end up with more boilerplate.

Py2/Py3 has definitely been a major pain.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#150

Post by tim333 »

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…

There have been surveys if a bit out of date:

Poll: What's Your Favorite Programming Language? (2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3746692

Poll: What's Your Most Disliked Programming Language? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3748961

https://i.imgur.com/toGKy21.jpg

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