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Why People Should Learn Python

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Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#281

Post by Stubb »

justifier wrote: post #274
Stubb wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing that Python 2 vs. Python 3 has still not yet been sorted out. I dipped my toe into Python a couple years ago when looking for a general-purpose scripting language and quickly gave up in frustration—Python 3 was by far the preferable flavor, but many libraries simply didn't work. I picked up Ruby and haven't looked back.

i started with python when 3 dropped in ~2008.917 ignorant of any prior ecosystem i just thought i was getting into the most current i came for the prebaked arbitrary precision floating point arithmetic and now i use it for prototyping all of my projects, and all the other stuff that i would call general scripting this 2to3 complaint made sense to me from an employed standpoint:i work as X and use 2.7's Y library; bu…

This was back in late 2013. My general scripting had to do with automating wireless network simulations to explore parameter spaces and slicing & dicing results stored in MySQL or SQLite databases.

I recall several showstoppers in Python v3 including integration into Emacs, accessing a MySQL database, and basic visualization. The library system was also a mess. It didn't seem possible to develop on v3 and expect that the libraries you needed would be available. Or that anyone else would care since they were all using v2.7.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#282

Post by throway21312 »

nilliams wrote: post #277
TeMPOraL wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The JS community is considerably larger than all other programming communities, and better at promoting (and documenting) its tools/libraries/frameworks (a lot of these tools come with beautiful landing pages, docs and demos). That shouldn't be seen as a mark against the technology. Nobody is forcing you to switch tools.

> That shouldn't be seen as a mark against the technology. Nobody is forcing you to switch tools.

Except when they do because they're the front end team. :P

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#283

Post by rezashirazian »

nhumrich wrote: post #164
tim333 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Someone should start another "what's your favorite language" poll. A lot of currently popular languages weren't even on the 2012 poll at all, (like golang)

Swift wasn't even released back then

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#284

Post by blakeyrat »

passiveincomelg wrote: post #61
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…

Interesting that you rate RoR lower than Java and .NET. My perception is that there is a lot of bashing of the latter two. Personally I do like Python, Rust and Go and I'm curious about Swift. So there's one "data" point. :)

Any bashing of C# is always because "Micro$loth" was involved with it, very rarely is it criticized on its actual features or tools. (And when it is, the criticism is usually something like, "it's too much like Java", which I don't personally see as very damning.)

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#285

Post by blakeyrat »

z3t4 wrote: post #38
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…

What I find interesting is that we are so quick to follow new trends.

1) Speak for yourself 2) Python's from 1995

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#286

Post by dccoolgai »

galfarragem wrote: post #199
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…

Ordering languages and frameworks by amount of 'love' (edited with small adjustments): ***** Python, Rust, Lisp ****' Go, Swift, C, PostgreSQL **** Elm, Elixir, Typescript, Haskell, OCaml, JS-ES6, Kotlin, Crystal ***' Scala, Lua, Clojure, Erlang *** C#/.NET, Java, C++, Ruby, JS-ES5, MySQL ** Node JS, RoR, Meteor, MongoDB * PHP, VBasic, Cobol, Coffeescript

Add:

* * * * * WASM

Dare to question the pragmatics of diverging web dev practices into a whole new realm of complexity and drown in downvotes - and a litany of people being downright personally insulting/condescending. This is sort of a corollary to JS being * (I think you ranked ES6 too high) and I've been inured to people hating/ranting against JS to a point - but even I was shocked by the personal rancor that oozes out if you try to have an objective discussion about whether the web really needs one more language.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#287

Post by squeaky-clean »

pmontra wrote: post #122
guitarbill wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how about an almost Erlang-like full stop? This is just brackets/braces in disguise, at which point you might as well follow convention and use {}. This is obviously a very personal issue, but for me, the whitespace has less cognitive load. E.g.: in languages with brackets, people usually still indent the code for readability. I've also found that when teaching people to program, consistency works well. I think thi…

For those languages is not people who reindent code but it's the editor or the IDE. There is usually a key to force reindentation. That is possible because {} or even the end in Ruby are easy markers for the block (there are multiple markers for a block start in Ruby). Is there any automatical indentation function in some editor for Python? If not, it's Python the unfortunate language where people has to indent code…

> For those languages is not people who reindent code but it's the editor or the IDE. There is usually a key to force reindentation.

Regardless of whom or what is doing the indentation, people still prefer reading code which is indented, even in a language which relies on braces or parenthesis for flow. The indenting is not for the compiler's sake, it has no problem understanding this: http://www.ioccc.org/2014/maffiodo1/prog.c

Also people get very picky and personal when it comes to indentation in ways that a computer can't always choose. I prefer to almost always indent and format my code myself, rather than letting the editor choose. Python is the only language I actually let my editor auto-format, because of PEP-8.

> Is there any automatical indentation function in some editor for Python?

Pretty much any editor will have a feature for this, or allow you to install a popular plugin for it in less than a minute.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#288

Post by nilliams »

throway21312 wrote: post #282
nilliams wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The JS community is considerably larger than all other programming communities, and better at promoting (and documenting) its tools/libraries/frameworks (a lot of these tools come with beautiful landing pages, docs and demos). That shouldn't be seen as a mark against the technology. Nobody is forcing you to switch tools.

> That shouldn't be seen as a mark against the technology. Nobody is forcing you to switch tools. Except when they do because they're the front end team. :P

Well you should really have that out with them! If you feel they're needlessly switching and putting your project at risk, have them justify it.

(Or just have a rule that as a team you try e.g. '1 new thing' per project).

Again this shouldn't be a reason to hate on the JS community.

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#289

Post by agentgt »

premium-concern wrote: post #271
agentgt wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I guess they have been actively shrinking the jar (it isn't 4 megs but ~5.5... still a massive improvement [1]). As far as kitchen sink I'm still not sure what idiomatic Scala is especially with the likes of Scalaz. Maybe modern Scala is finally abandoning the OOP fusion. Of course my biggest reason of not liking Scala is completely arbitrary and almost illogical (of course most reasons to (dis)favor things are a…

Maven Central says it's around 4.4MB (with some things still pending to be dropped before the release of the final version)[1]. [1] https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.scala-lang/scala-libr... I would disagree with the comment on verbosity compared to Java 8/Haskell/Ocaml. Most of the things I do regularly in Scala would require a magnitude of more code. Ocaml doesn't even have higher-kinded types or implicits, so…

I'm not sure I like implicits as for HKT... "with great power comes...".

HKTs are great for a generic library writer (aka standard library) but I think the over abstract nature ends up confusing your average developer. You basically have your type aficionados obfuscating the codebase for developers who can barely handle generics. It is sort of analogous to using massive reflection / meta-programming in scripting language (albeit far more safe).

Being extremely implicit and abstract comes with a cognitive load.

OCaml's Functors (ie super strict and explicit) on the other hand can get massively repetitive.

I vaguely remember HKTs being expensive compile time. Is that still the case?

Re: Why People Should Learn Python

#290

Post by IndianAstronaut »

korijn wrote: post #57
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…

Check out conda sometime.

It can conflict with any native Python installations. So if you are running any pre built Python libraries which point to any system wide Python, it can be a nightmare. Hue is one example I ran into.
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