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Problems I Have with Python

darkf.github.io

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Re: Problems I Have with Python

#71

Post by xapata »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #57
darkf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, many are subjective preferences Certainly, it is titled "Problems I Have" for a reason. :-) I do not expect everyone to agree with me, but it is what I feel I personally lack when using it quite a lot. > I imagine this statement could offend some of the smart and hard-working people who are working on improving the python language. That was certainly not my intention -- as stated, I do love the language and…

> I did not propose a solution because there are many, as you note; there are, however, implementations with decent solutions like AFAIK Jython. There are no solutions that satisfy everyone that I am aware of yet. Guido has said in the past that he'd be happy to get rid of the GIL, and would merge a patch that solves it, as long as: * It does not reduce the performance of single-threaded Python code. * It stays compa…

The GIL is only a problem because there's "no free lunch" -- no single strategy that is best in all cases.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#72

Post by xapata »

dev360 wrote: post #46
darkf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, many are subjective preferences Certainly, it is titled "Problems I Have" for a reason. :-) I do not expect everyone to agree with me, but it is what I feel I personally lack when using it quite a lot. > I imagine this statement could offend some of the smart and hard-working people who are working on improving the python language. That was certainly not my intention -- as stated, I do love the language and…

I was taken back by this rather harsh treatment of Python. Is it really realistic to 'have it all'? I'm fully aware that I'd have to go to crazier languages if I want parallelism or speed. For what Python is, it offers me reasonable tradeoffs (mostly slanted towards productivity).. Regarding the FP comments, since it lacks TCO, my take away has always been that Python can only ever become a quasi-functional language.…

The lack of tail-call optimization to make the CPython interpreter simpler and debugging easier by preserving the call stack. It was a choice, not an oversight.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#73

Post by highfestiva »

I'd love to have all those problems fixed. I constantly bump in to exactly those things myself, and I believe a majority of developers would find the language better with than without remedies. Especially the trivial things (like flatten, moving reduce back out from functools, lambda state and so forth) takes no time - it's just politics.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#74

Post by sametmax »

olau wrote: post #70
sametmax wrote: post #52

> The standard interpreter bring rather slow; I'm tired about this one. In the last 13 years, 97% if the projects I worked on didn't need Python to be any faster, it was not the bottleneck. The remaining ones could leverage some solution to bypass the problem. Python speed is indeed an issue to a few people, but it's not the red flag I can read about here and there. I've been hearing this argument for ever. PHP is sl…

"No. Python 3 arrived quickly after many warnings. Then tools, tutorials and a looooooooooooot of time have been provided. This is nowhere Python's fault. It's the best damn migration story I've ever witnessed in my life. My only grudge on Python 3 is that it didn't break ENOUGH. I wished for stuff to have changed more." I think you wrote a good comment, thanks!, but regarding 2 to 3, I think you got this wrong. I th…

The problem I have with this theory is that the JS community and Ruby community had big breaking changes, dev told them to fuck off. The community adapted quickly.

Python took care of the community, giving time, tools and doc. And nobody moved. But they surely complained a lot.

What does that say ?

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#75

Post by BlackFingolfin »

darkf wrote: post #17
acqq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you claim it's "incompetence" (it's not) then publish the patches that don't break anything but significantly speed up it, for example. Because you complain "it' slow." It's not what you think it is. It's Python, not a toy language used by nobody. Just first try yourself to "fix" Python and keep its existing users happy by not breaking anything for them, then write about it.

Cool, I think you completely dodged the point. I never said it was slow because they were incompetent.

Your post quite strongly alludes to it being either due to incompetence, or politics, or both. So I think grandparent has a very valid point, and you might want to change the tone of your post a bit; then it'll produce fewer knee-jerk reactions, and might be taken more seriously.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#76

Post by xapata »

darkf wrote: post #17
acqq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you claim it's "incompetence" (it's not) then publish the patches that don't break anything but significantly speed up it, for example. Because you complain "it' slow." It's not what you think it is. It's Python, not a toy language used by nobody. Just first try yourself to "fix" Python and keep its existing users happy by not breaking anything for them, then write about it.

Cool, I think you completely dodged the point. I never said it was slow because they were incompetent.

Python has made some trade-offs that you dislike. You complain about the negative consequences without comparing those against the benefits.

One of the major factors in speed is efficient memory layout. Contrast a Python list with a NumPy array. To achieve speedier loops and vectorized arithmetic [0], the array gives up dynamic typing and dynamic sizing. In most applications, I would gladly give up some compute speed to gain some programming productivity.

I love duck-typing. Formal typing has some impressive examples, but in the projects I've worked on has reduced my productivity. Perhaps because data are so often serialized to simple formats or written to databases that discard the best tools of formal typing. Anecdotal evidence, for sure.

I've never been bothered by the GIL, but I have benefitted from it [1].

[0] https://docs.continuum.io/mkl-optimizations/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3AyI_u66Bw

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#77

Post by amyjess »

Grue3 wrote: post #24
y7 wrote: post #9

Very short-sightedly written. It sounds like the author just wants a language with a different philosophy, and instead of realizing this goes on to call the differences "obvious flaws in design" that aren't improved because of "Incompetence? Politics? Who knows." This is especially bad given that Python (in my opinion) has a very well thought-out and transparent change process, with PEPs that usually consider most al…

>Why is it such a problem to move your closure to its own line and give it a name? What if it cannot have a meaningful name? You don't give a name to every single value in your program, why would first-class functions be any different? Like, there's an idiom in python where you write a function named "wrapper" in a decorator and then return wrapper. Except you put @wraps on it, so the name of this function isn't even…

> You don't give a name to every single value in your program

There are lots of times I name single-use values because I want to throw it to the logger before I pass it to whatever function is going to use it.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#78

Post by acqq »

darkf wrote: post #17
acqq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you claim it's "incompetence" (it's not) then publish the patches that don't break anything but significantly speed up it, for example. Because you complain "it' slow." It's not what you think it is. It's Python, not a toy language used by nobody. Just first try yourself to "fix" Python and keep its existing users happy by not breaking anything for them, then write about it.

Cool, I think you completely dodged the point. I never said it was slow because they were incompetent.

> I never said it was slow because they were incompetent

Your own article appears to have exactly that claim:

> These are obvious flaws in design, in my opinion, that warrant re-looking at, but to which no real improvements are being made for some reason. (Incompetence? Politics? Both? Who knows.)

> Without further ado: The standard interpreter bring rather slow; PyPy is nice, but its Python 3 support is very immature.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#80

Post by amyjess »

darkf wrote: post #21
lmm wrote: post #19

Python's semantics are unlikely to ever be fast and most Python users have already worked around its speed issues. asyncio is new; python3 porting is happening. It seems unfair to complain that no real improvements are being made and also complain that these new things are immature. reduce being pushed behind an import is stupid, but it's only one import. lambda is fine, if you're writing in functional style you're u…

>lambda is fine, if you're writing in functional style you're using expressions for everything anyway. No, I /really would/ like to be able to write: foo.on_click(lambda: x += 1) The language not supporting this (when most others do) is just silly.

> foo.on_click(lambda: x += 1)

Mutation in lambdas is not compatible with your complaint about "inadequate support for high-level functional programming", as it goes against the principles of FP.

You can't do that in Haskell either, and any FP purist would blanch at a statement like that.

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