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Linux Journal: Readers' Choice Awards 2010 - Best Programming Language: Python

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Re: Linux Journal: Readers' Choice Awards 2010 - Best Programming Language: Python

#3

Post by prog »

Large companies still seem to prefer Perl. I know both Perl and Python but for larger programs I tend to prefer Python. I had a tough time convincing the management that it we should use Python for a project (I expect it to be 20-30KLOC in Python). Perl is the default scripting language in my organization. Default not as in policy but its what programmers reach out for as thats what they know. I think this might be the case in most large companies. Most programmers just know that Python exists but not much more.

Even where Perl is concerned, I don't think most developers in my organization care about writing good code. I spent a lot of time dealing with a large code base last week that uses a hash with hundreds of keys as a means of passing data between functions. No one even bothers with cpan much.

Re: Linux Journal: Readers' Choice Awards 2010 - Best Programming Language: Python

#5

Post by aloneinkyoto »

In what way can a programming language be objectively better than another language? I thought they were tools for accomplishing specific goals? It's not like we hold competitions declaring hammers being better hammers than screwdrivers.

Re: Linux Journal: Readers' Choice Awards 2010 - Best Programming Language: Python

#9

Post by tzs »

jncraton wrote: post #8

I have a hard time taking this too seriously because CVS ranked as the third best revision control system above bazaar and mercurial.

That was definitely a "WTF" moment when I saw that.

Are we in the Bizarro world? I know that Git vs. Mercurial is a bit like Vim vs. Emacs, but I can't see how any rational person could rank them on opposite sides of Subversion. If someone likes centralized over distributed, Subversion should beat both Git and Mercurial. If one likes distributed, both Git and Mercurial should beat Subversion.

Re: Linux Journal: Readers' Choice Awards 2010 - Best Programming Language: Python

#10

Post by nikcub »

There are some unusual results here and it is because the results are swayed by topics and technologies that LinuxJournal cover, especially what they cover favorably.

ie. The results inevidably reflect the editorial opinion of LinuxJournal, since most of those who answer the survey are likely to source their information from the magazine.

As an example, take revision-control. The winner was git, but unusually CVS and subversion finished above bazaar and mercurial (and other more modern systems).

Google results:

CVS or subversion, number of articles in LJ, the past 12 months:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cvs+OR+subversion+site:linuxj...

9 results

Mercurial or Bazaar:

http://www.google.com/search?q=bazaar+OR+mercurial+site:linu...

0 results

Git had 18 articles.

Same with Python (143 results) and Ruby (32 results). Further the coverage of Python is extremely positive, with a number of feature articles - while for Ruby (no rating at all) there are no featured articles.

The results of this survey shouldn't be seen as a study of the best, or even the most popular technologies - since for all the categories that I checked, the results and order of results matched the number of times that product or technology had been covered in LinuxJournal.

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