Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Problems I Have with Python

darkf.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 239 posts

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#211

Post by kazinator »

ankitml wrote: post #35

It is hard to accept inputs from people who dont appreciate that any technical decision require understanding the tradeoffs. It is true that python is not perfect, but perfection was never a goal. Python has made some tradeoffs, just like every other technical system. Also, just like any other technical system people are working towards improving in a specific direction. They only way to change or evolve that directi…

Influencing the Pythons of this world is generally a waste of time; just go use that which, today, works the way you want, or make it yourself if it doesn't exist.

Anyway, are you saying that knowledgeable people who think Python is junk shouldn't say anything? Only get involved in Python development or shut up?

If someone's words can save just one person from using Python, that's worthwhile.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#213

Post by darkf »

kazinator wrote: post #211
ankitml wrote: post #35

It is hard to accept inputs from people who dont appreciate that any technical decision require understanding the tradeoffs. It is true that python is not perfect, but perfection was never a goal. Python has made some tradeoffs, just like every other technical system. Also, just like any other technical system people are working towards improving in a specific direction. They only way to change or evolve that directi…

Influencing the Pythons of this world is generally a waste of time; just go use that which, today, works the way you want, or make it yourself if it doesn't exist. Anyway, are you saying that knowledgeable people who think Python is junk shouldn't say anything? Only get involved in Python development or shut up? If someone's words can save just one person from using Python, that's worthwhile.

Nah, I would love people to use Python -- just to help improve it as well (either through libraries, alternative languages or submitting changes through official channels.)

Saying I am "self aggrandising" is disingenuous and misleading at best.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#214

Post by xapata »

jononor wrote: post #199
xapata wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

foo.on_click(partial(q.append, foo)) The nice thing about ``append`` is it's atomic (for builtins).

Where does the update of `x` go in this example? By observing a Queue or Stream `q`?

If it must be mutable state, then ideally you'd have a single consumer thread for counting off that queue to avoid worrying about locks.

Or maybe what's in the queue gets written to a permanent log and ``x`` is a query of that log, a la Datomic.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#216

Post by xapata »

stcredzero wrote: post #141
xapata wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the major factors in speed is efficient memory layout. In most applications, I would gladly give up some compute speed to gain some programming productivity. By Smalltalk standards, Python is pretty profligate. (By 90's C programmer standards, Smalltalk is pretty profligate.) However, Smalltalk still has many of the high productivity features as Python. (In fact, the debugging story is far superior.) I suspect…

I enjoyed coding homework assignments in Smalltalk, but for some reason I never tried using it professionally.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#217

Post by mannykannot »

darkf wrote: post #115
BlackFingolfin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, just people connecting that sentiment with other statements. It should be cleared up since it's causing some mass confusion. It's funny because I preface it by saying "Remember that it's a matter of opinion" (and, well, the title alone) and people come out of the woodwork completely disregarding this, or outright misinterpreting sections of it. I maintain that a large reader base here does not actually... read.

The thing is, by saying that your incompetence/politics remark is just an opinion, and by not going out of your way to offer a factual justification, you have made it clear that it is essentially an information-free statement, while its snide disparagement of people who have put a lot of effort into Python lingers undiminished, if not actually emphasized as such by its lack of information. Then you double-down by taking on all the people who see that this is so. As a consequence, the currently-top issue in the comments is this, and not whatever it is you think someone should be doing to improve Python.

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#218

Post by grondilu »

darkf wrote: post #208
grondilu wrote: post #154

> Quite to the point, lambdas (anonymous closures) in Python are gimped. They are single-expression functions, which means no statements, even global/nonlocal qualifiers. I remember once on rosettacode I wanted to write a Runge-Kutta function in Python with a lambda. I was stopped by the lack of variable assignment, until I remembered that they can be emulated by nesting function calls: def RK4(f): return lambda t, y…

... Yeah, that's gnarly. :D That is emulating `let` using lambdas, though, and not mutable assignment. Still useful if you really want to nest them, but still immutable.

I don't know, isn't it possible to do the equivalent of mutable assignment if I use the same variable name several times?

For instance for the equivalent of x = 3; x = x + 1; print(x):

    (lambda x: (lambda x: print(x))(x+1))(3);

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#219

Post by pinjo »

nneonneo wrote: post #203
pinjo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a debugging viewpoint, this does not make sense, there is usually no interesting information in the in between frames. TCE can also make debugging easier, how useful is a stack trace of 1000 lines consisting of ... File "bla.py", line 4, in fib return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2) File "bla.py", line 4, in fib return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2) File "bla.py", line 4, in fib return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2) ... Not so much I…

I like how you picked an example that is explicitly not TCO-able. In any case, this particular problem is no longer an issue as of Python 3.6, as that now collapses repeated stacktrace lines (see https://bugs.python.org/issue26823 ). Although this doesn't work for mutual tail calls, it does solve the debug noise issue in the most common case.

Ah yes, that is a bit stupid, I just wanted an example of a traceback :)

Re: Problems I Have with Python

#220

Post by Chris2048 »

vorg wrote: post #197
Chris2048 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Jython good though? Last I used it is had issues keeping pace, i.e. demonstrable memory issue that took a long time to fix, lagged considerably behind python 2/3 versions. It's also worth noting, that as an essentially transcompiled language, you need to have a good appreciation of Java machinery, in which case languages like Groovy provide good competition.

When talking about JVM languages suitable for building systems, Jython isn't generally mentioned for the reasons you give, nor is Apache Groovy. Those two are good for scripting, e.g. testing Java classes, build scripts, glue code. Besides Java, languages like Clojure, Scala, and Kotlin are usually considered as systems languages on the JVM.

True, but I believe Groovy and Jython compete for the same space, if not system-building.
Post reply on HN