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The Incredible Growth of Python

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Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#191

Post by dom96 »

nimmer wrote: post #180
dom96 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what the ecosystem for Python looked like in ~1999. Did it show signs of having the ecosystem it has now in those years? I'm certain that almost everyone dismissed it due to its syntax (there are still people out there that dismiss it because of that).

> what the ecosystem for Python looked like in ~1999 Very small. The language was not popular and many people claimed a community project could not overtake languages backed by companies. Same for the Linux kernel.

Thank you for supporting my point. However, based on your nickname I wouldn't be surprised if you were a little biased :)

I would actually love to read some forum/mailing list posts about this. If anyone has any links handy (or knows where to find them) then please post them.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#192

Post by cossatot »

nstart wrote: post #147
vanderZwan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Karolinska as the sole developer on a data browsing platform, inside a neurobiology research group. The entire department is either using or learning Python. Of course, the work environment itself is a severe form of selection bias, but there definitely has been an uptake in Python among scientists. (Which leaves me kinda sad, because I like Julia more - I'm sure it will keep growing though)

Julia is definitely a step up in data science programming. It's purpose built for data science. I guess that's also the reason why Python has grown more than Julia. The likelihood of someone having worked with Python in an unrelated field means that when starting out in another field, if the Python option exists, they are probably going to take it. Apart from that, if one is just getting started out in data science a…

Julia is really fast but the DataFrames/DataTables package was kind of slow and feature-incomplete. Because Pandas is so optimized, Julia wasn't winning out over Python on the speed side of things, and was definitely losing on the ergonimics, so for data science it wasn't the best choice (unlike say numerical simulation).

I'm sure this will change if it hasn't already, especially with the better parallelization that Julia is capable of.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#193

Post by cossatot »

princeb wrote: post #110
photojosh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, this was also true when I was using Matlab back before switching to Python (2006ish!), except you had to dig through documentation instead of just having everything immediately available on SO. :)

the matlab documentation, imo, is the best technical documentation ever written for anything. if your background was more math-heavy then the docs provided easy to understand translation between recognizable mathematical idioms into code (if matlab wasn't already very math-idiomatic). and back in 2010 or so, python's numerical optimization libraries left a lot to be desired, and totally hopeless compared to matlab. (…

Matlab's documentation is really good, except when you need to look at the algorithm and can't because it's closed-source...

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#194

Post by gjjrfcbugxbhf »

wdfx wrote: post #160
gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For the industry I work in, because of this: http://www.vfxplatform.com We're still maintaining stacks on py 2.6 which predate the reference platform specs

Ok. It looks like they also drop python 2 next year?

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#195

Post by joshuamorton »

kranner wrote: post #102
joshuamorton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, for things like tensorflow, you have to build from source to enable certain optimizations. Wheel's aren't source builds essentially.

I think GP is talking about virtualenv, not pip. Using an optimized build in a virtualenv environment should not be any slower than using it outside the environment, right?

Ah yes, that's true as far as I know.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#196

Post by eighthnate »

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.

> While PHP has gotten better recently, the language is not nearly as powerful or complete as almost all of the popular alternatives.

I can prove that python and php are equal in their "power" because I can build compilers/interpreters of one with the other.

If you are arguing that python has better libraries then it's possible though for web development, I'd say most popular languages have similar libraries and capabilities.

But my point was more to the point of expertise in stack. A skilled PHP developer is going to be just as productive with the PHP stack as a skilled python developer.

People who think one stack is better than the other usually base their opinion on poor/bad developers.

There are plenty of horrible python developers as there are php developers.

The "power" of most stacks, especially something closely related as the PHP and Python stacks, are similar.

The difference in productive boils down to competence of developers, not the stack itself.

But that's just my experience and my opinion.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#197

Post by mixmastamyk »

erikb wrote: post #119
mixmastamyk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy install hasn't been needed for years, consider it deprecated.

Well, as said before sometimes you need it because pip isn't installed by default. Just had such a situation yesterday at work. A guy from QA (not a dev) needs to setup an environment to install our tool for testing. He doesn't know python, so explaining to him what a virtualenv is would take way too much time. He probably also doesn't know how to use the OS's package manager to install pip. So, what to do? Give him…

You don't. First, if your QA peeps can't figure out an OS package manager, they need training. It's also a one-liner.

Without a package manager it is only a two-step process. 1) download get-pip.py from the source 2) run it with sudo

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#198

Post by wdfx »

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #194
wdfx wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the industry I work in, because of this: http://www.vfxplatform.com We're still maintaining stacks on py 2.6 which predate the reference platform specs

Ok. It looks like they also drop python 2 next year?

They plan to release the spec like that, but I'm certain on this update most studios will be lagging due to the vast amount of 2 to 3 migration work that needs to be done.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#199

Post by cutler »

swat535 wrote: post #188
cutler wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think hype is the main factor. Ruby's decline is due to its narrow focus on web development and Rails in particular. Whilst there certainly are gems covering other areas of computing Ruby never seemed to diversify the way Python has. With Node.js eating Ruby's lunch in the web development sphere Ruby is left looking like the single-commodity Venezuelan economy. Let me add that I think Rails is a fantastic pie…

Having done both Ruby and Python, I confirm that they are pretty similar languages, both performance wide and syntax wise. Python is mainly popular because of historical reasons. Not because of some magical functionality it has over ruby, here are a few key points: Ruby was created in 1996 and Python in 1989. Python was the main language chosen by academia because at the time no one really knew about ruby, until its…

Ruby suffers from indifferent stewardship. Yes Ruby could have competed with Python in the scientific sphere but it didn't and now it's too late. I actually think Ruby is a better language than Python, by the way.

Re: The Incredible Growth of Python

#200

Post by cutler »

ngsayjoe wrote: post #175
cutler wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think hype is the main factor. Ruby's decline is due to its narrow focus on web development and Rails in particular. Whilst there certainly are gems covering other areas of computing Ruby never seemed to diversify the way Python has. With Node.js eating Ruby's lunch in the web development sphere Ruby is left looking like the single-commodity Venezuelan economy. Let me add that I think Rails is a fantastic pie…

I think besides Rails, Ruby is also heavily used in DevOps, e.g. Chef, Puppet, etc. I personally prefer using Ruby for testing & Selenium as well.

Yes, but if you look at penetration testing and hacking tools apart from Metasploit its all Python. Again, Ruby had something good - Chef and Puppet - but failed to capitalise on and extend its domain. Now every kid new to hacking thinks it's synonymous with Python.
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