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The Incredible Growth of Python

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Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#121

Post by fleurdelotus »

blub wrote: post #118
andrewstuart wrote: post #6

Python 2 advocates were quite firm in telling us that Python 3 and its incompatibility with Python 2 had killed Python and people would abandon Python altogether in droves for other languages. This post is suggesting the opposite, that Python is more healthy than ever and growing incredibly fast.

Those people were advocating for stability, not necessarily for P2. The 2->3 was a pretty big screw up, and it definitely had an impact on the language and ecosystem. Python seems to have overcome that (keyword: seems), thanks to a strong offering in data science, but 2->3 is still a headache. I never really used Python for application development, but rather for utility/scripts and I am still on 2, because I don't n…

>>Python is still losing people to Golang

Any source (other than Rob Pike) ?

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#122

Post by pen2l »

int_19h wrote: post #100
autokad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pip (py2) on windows is an absolute disaster. pip install numpy .... if you are using windows, using python without this website is nearly impossible: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/

Things are a lot better with Python 3 on Windows, and especially so with Python 3.5+. "pip install numpy" will actually work, among other things. But even for packages that don't have binary wheels and have to compile things, it's much easier now to install a compiler toolchain (it's actually a single download!), and have your Python installation just pick it up automatically.

> Things are a lot better with Python 3 on Windows, and especially so with Python 3.5+.

For one of my main applications py3 proved to be too slow. For my application I use: numpy, pil, tkinter, and subprocess (and process/produce/draw on screen images (at a rate of 120/sec)). I don't know WHY but with python2 it runs acceptably fast, on python3 it's 20% slower. This has been something common for me actually.

I do tend to use py3 when doing any kind of data science though.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#123

Post by Twirrim »

mark-r wrote: post #92
chrisseaton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's the newer ... Java Python (1991) is older than Java (1995).

But Java was an overnight success, while it took Python years to get traction. I was exposed to both around the same time, probably 1995, but I ignored Python until the second time I encountered it in 2003. It just didn't have the hype.

Java was by no means an overnight success. It was way too slow for several years until they really started to do anything more than run the bytecode in the JVM.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#124

Post by blub »

fleurdelotus wrote: post #121
blub wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people were advocating for stability, not necessarily for P2. The 2->3 was a pretty big screw up, and it definitely had an impact on the language and ecosystem. Python seems to have overcome that (keyword: seems), thanks to a strong offering in data science, but 2->3 is still a headache. I never really used Python for application development, but rather for utility/scripts and I am still on 2, because I don't n…

>>Python is still losing people to Golang Any source (other than Rob Pike) ?

Anecdata I'm afraid, hence "feeling". This can only be solved through an actual market study.

The SO post is not the study we need, because it uses a proxy variable (SO tags).

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#125

Post by tcdent »

girvo wrote: post #115
tcdent wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referencing a micro-framework shows just how out of the loop you are. A better example of a PHP framework is Yii, but you still see tons of ambiguous arrays used because of the lack of expressiveness in the language. Zend is not even a contender for modern web application development. And again, the gratuitous use of arrays for configuration highlight the shortcomings of PHP.

And mentioning Yii here instead of, say, Laravel or Symfony (though I loathe the latter) makes me wonder how in the loop you are, yourself. I've not been a PHP developer for years. I wouldn't go back to it. But pretending it can't compete with Django is one of the weirder things I've seen on HN in a while.

Django everyday since 0.9.6 Still an active maintainer of a small PHP lib, though.

> I wouldn't go back to it.

That's what I'm expressing: there's no reason to choose PHP in 2017. This isn't misdirected 'PHP hate', but a genuine disagreement with the OP's statement:

> There is nothing inherently "more productive" on one stack over the next.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#126

Post by pen2l »

epage wrote: post #63
pen2l wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three of us (including me), in an academic lab, are making the jump from matlab to python. We use py3 (of Anaconda, on Windows10). We like it, but we are constantly screaming and bitching about the complications of 2 3 ("Ahhh X and Y module only works on py2!", "Ahhh device developer only provides example code for Labview and Matlab!", "Ahhh python isn't even supported for this device/application!"). Package manageme…

> "Ahhh device developer only provides example code for Labview and Matlab!", "Ahhh python isn't even supported for this device/application!"). What kind of devices or libraries do you use from LabVIEW but there isn't Python support or examples? If its an NI product, some are starting to get Python support DAQmx https://github.com/ni/nidaqmx-python/blob/master/nidaqmx_exa... XNET https://github.com/ni/nixnet-python/b…

Andor cameras: http://www.andor.com/scientific-software/software-developmen... Labview, Matlab, lots of other frameworks, no python

PI instruments: https://www.physikinstrumente.com/en/products/linear-stages-... Matlab, Labview, etc. yes. No python

Thorlabs equipment: https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=81... Same story, no python.

In fact, it's always a _SURPRISE_ when I see Python being supported. I would say after having gone through about a hundred major lab devices, less than 2% I found to be supporting Python.

Importantly, example code should be made available (as it generally is for matlab, and labview) because creating things from scratch in a move-fast environment is a little too much.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#127

Post by pbreit »

goodoldboys wrote: post #42

As someone who works with Python every day, this isn't surprising. I forget where I heard/read it, but someone made the claim that Python is the "second best language for everything" (paraphrasing) and I couldn't agree more. Need to create a web app that interfaces with a data pipeline? Python/Django/Flask is perfect. There are countless other examples too.

I agree that Python works well for just about everything but wish there was a framework between Django & Flask.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#128

Post by pbreit »

tcdent wrote: post #83
eighthnate wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We started out with one senior Dev on the Python stack, and simply found that the productivity on Python/Django just too compelling to stay on PHP. There is nothing inherently "more productive" on one stack over the next. It's just technologies which are fundamentally similar. A competent senior dev on the python stack would be just as productive as a competent senior dev on a php stack and vice versa. It just seem…

Absolutely false. While PHP has gotten better recently, the language is not nearly as powerful or complete as almost all of the popular alternatives. Up until very recently, something like the Django ORM was impossible to express in PHP. Take an honest look at the available frameworks (especially in comparison to something archaic like Drupal) and you'll find there's no competition.

The problem with Drupal isn't PHP, it's Drupal.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#129

Post by gjjrfcbugxbhf »

yes_or_gnome wrote: post #116
cshenton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get into the habit of making a virtual environment and requirements.txt in every repo then it's smooth. Just activate the env when you're using the repo and use vanilla pip install to install dependencies. Then pip freeze them into the requirements file. It's a very similar workflow to a gemfile and bundler.

You're going to have a hard time supporting multiple versions of Python that way. If I started a new package today I would target 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7-dev, and likely, 2.7. A lot of well maintained packages have different dependencies based on the exact version of Python. If you're crazy enough to support 2.6, then there will be a lot of additional packages in pip freeze. Ideally, packages would have just one set of de…

Just target 3.4+ then...

Why would you sort 2.6 in 2017?

Supporting 2.7 these days in a new package is already a bit of a wtf - Django for example drops support for it next year.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#130

Post by yladiz »

pen2l wrote: post #9
andrewstuart wrote: post #6

Python 2 advocates were quite firm in telling us that Python 3 and its incompatibility with Python 2 had killed Python and people would abandon Python altogether in droves for other languages. This post is suggesting the opposite, that Python is more healthy than ever and growing incredibly fast.

Three of us (including me), in an academic lab, are making the jump from matlab to python. We use py3 (of Anaconda, on Windows10). We like it, but we are constantly screaming and bitching about the complications of 2 3 ("Ahhh X and Y module only works on py2!", "Ahhh device developer only provides example code for Labview and Matlab!", "Ahhh python isn't even supported for this device/application!"). Package manageme…

I think you're right, the biggest pain for a general developer for Python is determining which package manager to use. I'm thankfully insulated from it a bit due to using Docker for a lot of my development, but I hate the fact that Pip won't install to your home/project directory unless you coax it to (and sometimes still won't even if you give it all the proper environment variables), and I think virtual environments are not the solution (I shouldn't have to think about how to install a package or work on a project). Especially coming from Node-land, and before that Ruby-land, Python seemed like a wonderfully designed language but with terrible package managers. From what I remember Pip is going to change the default to install on the home directory sometime in the future, but it shouldn't have taken years of discussion to come to the conclusion that it's the right thing to do.
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