Live data from Hacker News

I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

news.ycombinator.com

1–10 of 231 posts

I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

#1
I don't like Python.

I love C. I like C++ too. I used to write a lot of Java when I was a kid (as in high-school kid) but now that I've written quite a bit of C and C++, Java seems more like a toy language. I did enjoy Java back then, however. I yet to do any major work in C#, but it seems to be a powerful language, especially when handling certain kinds of complexity.

I've been learning LISP on weekends for two weekends now, and I find it interesting. I know little bits of Haskell (am planning to learn it later this year) and seem to like it too. Maybe I like the idea of liking Haskell, I'll know for sure once I actually start writing Haskell.

Coming back to the point - I don't like Python. I've never liked it. I've tried working on various Python projects but have always found some or the other excuse to prematurely back out. And mind you, I love coding - I spend most of my time writing code or learning new stuff about code.

My question to the hardcore python lovers is this (and mind you, by hardcore I mean the kind of people who wrote Exaile, not the kind who hack up a Python script every now and then to organize their iPod): No doubt many of you have come from C / C++ / LISP backgrounds. What is the paradigm shift you experienced? I look at a piece of C code in a certain way - how do I look at a piece of Python code? How do I think about Python? How do I think in Python (copied that one from Bruce Eckel)?

Re: I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

#3
I hate Python too, only because of its insistence on indentation and because of its verboseness relative to, say, Perl.

I'm not against the non-Perl philosophy of There Is Only One Way To Do It, but for God's sake, don't insist on indentation! I am under a personal vow that until Python lifts its indentation requirement (say, via a command-line switch), I'm no way using this language for my programming needs.

Re: I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

#4
Yesterday there was an interesting link on HN comparing NLP in Python vs. other languages: http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/howto/nlp-python.ht.... I think this article shows the clearness of the Python language - - and this clearness and simplicity is the reason why I love to code in Python.

Re: I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

#6

I hate Python too, only because of its insistence on indentation and because of its verboseness relative to, say, Perl. I'm not against the non-Perl philosophy of There Is Only One Way To Do It, but for God's sake, don't insist on indentation! I am under a personal vow that until Python lifts its indentation requirement (say, via a command-line switch), I'm no way using this language for my programming needs.

I've never understood this objection. Do you not indent your code anyway? If so, why should you also need to delineate scopes in another way? Python allows you to choose your indentation, it just requires consistency: something that is always required by coding standards (with good reason).

If there was a command line switch, would you use it? Why?

Re: I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

#9
post #4

Yesterday there was an interesting link on HN comparing NLP in Python vs. other languages: http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/howto/nlp-python.ht... . I think this article shows the clearness of the Python language - - and this clearness and simplicity is the reason why I love to code in Python.

As my boy would say, if you aint using lisp yous using blub, and blub programmers get a spanking!

Re: I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

#10
post #7

Do you hate scripting languages in general? Maybe you should compare python with other scripting languages.

I don't have much experience with scripting languages - I've only written some bash scripts to automate stuff (other than Python, of course).

Unless, of course, Brainf*ck counts as a "scripting language". :D

Post reply on HN