[deleted]
Thank You, Guido
11–20 of 388 posts
Re: Thank You, Guido
#12> It is so intuitive and beautifully designed
No it's not. Significant whitespace, underscores that mean things, lack of type system (but people treat variables as typed anyway), et all, make it quite a difficult language to understand. And we won't get into performance problems that it's cult following turns a blind eye to.
I will say Python has inspired a generation of languages that got away from the C-inspired syntax. We're moved to critically thinking about _why_ we write code the way we do, rather than simply accepting things because "that's the way it's done" and for that we owe Python a great debt.
Re: Thank You, Guido
#13Thank you, Guido!
Re: Thank You, Guido
#14This article is a sign of class, well done Dropbox.
I too have to say Thank you Guido. Python 1.5 helped me a lot with several projects way back when. Then I got into Django later, and marvelled at how easy it was to use. Now I use Python (and other things) for AI.
I am sad because of the motivation for Guido leaving the BFDL position, but empathize and understand. I hope he has fair winds and following seas for whatever journey he sails on next.
Re: Thank You, Guido
#15> It is so intuitive and beautifully designed No it's not. Significant whitespace, underscores that mean things, lack of type system (but people treat variables as typed anyway), et all, make it quite a difficult language to understand. And we won't get into performance problems that it's cult following turns a blind eye to. I will say Python has inspired a generation of languages that got away from the C-inspired sy…
When I first learned and took up Python in 1996 I didn't adopt it because it was elegantly designed, but because it was pragmatic and the only reasonable (to me) tool for a job that most people used Perl or Tcl or shell scripts for, which I didn't like.
Since then I've watched people use it as an application or systems programming language and I don't really get it.
To me it's a great Swiss army knife scripting language.
But yes, I think you're right. There are far more "elegant" programming languages. I never got the sense that that was Python's niche, though.
Re: Thank You, Guido
#16Did you notice this: "He has already put into motion the conversion of the Dropbox server code from Python 2 to Python 3." Even the company that hired Guido is still heavily dependent on Python 2, and it doesn't surprise me at all; my own employer still has a lot of it in internal tools.
Re: Thank You, Guido
#17A more than deserved retirement. And I'm sure there will be plenty of free time coding as well.
Given the impact Python has had on my career I'm nothing but grateful for it.
Thank You
Re: Thank You, Guido
#18To be honest, it is a sad moment, but it was expected. When Guido resigned from BDFL, I knew that it was the beginning of the end. And lets be honest, he's earned it. Thank you Guido, after learning Python, I never looked back, and it has been the source of great joy for me over the last decade.
> Thank you Guido, after learning Python, I never looked back
That matches my experience. All the pros and cons that in principle apply to any language, whether newer than Python or older, mean nothing to me in practice. Python is the one that feels right, the others feel like a chore. Since I started with Python 10 years ago, nothing has changed that.
There's ways I'll insist that Python is the best at [x], and ways I'll concede some other language is better at [y]. But it never amounts to anything close to a debate about what language I should use.
Re: Thank You, Guido
#19> It is so intuitive and beautifully designed No it's not. Significant whitespace, underscores that mean things, lack of type system (but people treat variables as typed anyway), et all, make it quite a difficult language to understand. And we won't get into performance problems that it's cult following turns a blind eye to. I will say Python has inspired a generation of languages that got away from the C-inspired sy…
I think you mean lack of static type checking. Python is more strongly typed than e.g. Perl and JavaScript.
Re: Thank You, Guido
#20"“When asked, I would give people my opinion that maintainable code is more important than clever code,” he said. “If I encountered clever code that was particularly cryptic, and I had to do some maintenance on it, I would probably rewrite it. So I led by example, and also by talking to other people.”" This is very sage advice.
Interesting in the context of Dropbox, as they ship the client code as obfuscated and encrypted pyc files and a custom runtime that's pretty "clever": https://anvilventures.com/blog/looking-inside-the-box.html
Edit. Yes I get the difference and the reasons they do this. The wordplay crossover (cryptic, clever, etc) was notable to me, and reminded me of the link I posted above.