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Thank You, Guido

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Thank You, Guido

#41

Post by peterwwillis »

not2b wrote: post #16

Did 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.

There has to be a term for when the business builds something with one tech stack, and then later, as if it was totally by surprise, realizes it needs to replace the whole thing, for basically no added business-value, and this happens every few years. I mean, everyone has known they would have to do this eventually, but it just kept being put off, like the business is a bad procrastinator. And they all do this.

Re: Thank You, Guido

#42

Post by _coveredInBees »

tyingq wrote: post #20
notkaiho wrote: post #2

"“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.

That has zero bearing on the point Guido was making. He is talking about development practices. The client code is not being sent to users for them to develop code and contribute to the Dropbox codebase.

Re: Thank You, Guido

#43

Post by deforciant »

After coding in Delphi, Java, C and C++ - Python was the first language that I really enjoyed coding it. When you enjoy a language, it's easy to start working on fun side projects that advance your skills and you continue improving yourself. Even though I don't write pretty much Python anymore, I still like and respect the language and would definitely recommend it to any new comers in programming. Thanks for Python!

Re: Thank You, Guido

#44

Post by MoronInAHurry »

exabrial wrote: post #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 sy…

A comment like this being upvoted and responsible for a large portion of the "discussion" on the language creator's goddamn retirement announcement makes me embarrassed for this community. Keep the pointless bickering over programming language superiority somewhere else.

Re: Thank You, Guido

#45

Post by skellera »

notkaiho wrote: post #2

"“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.

You’d think it would be common sense when writing something that other people will read. We don’t see people writing books in acronyms or omitting words.

How come so many people try to use code to show how smart they are?

Re: Thank You, Guido

#46

Post by FpUser »

FpUser wrote: post #36
gdulli wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"But it never amounts to anything close to a debate about what language I should use." So if your task was to deliver let's say commercial grade FFT library ( substitute with any other long computationally extensive process ) for consumption by others you would write it in Python?

Simple question leads to downvoting? Looks like we have a knight in shining armor protecting the castle of Python.

Re: Thank You, Guido

#47

Post by jamestenglish »

tyingq wrote: post #20
notkaiho wrote: post #2

"“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.

Just because the outcome of the code (i.e. obfuscated code) is "clever" doesn't mean that the code that does the obfuscation is clever

Re: Thank You, Guido

#48

Post by rgacote »

ummonk wrote: post #40
ajford wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a beginner, compared to many languages out there, it is very intuitive. I taught many 1st/2nd year college students Python as their first foray into programming, and it's flexibility and readability was a great way to get people in the door. I won't defend beauty, as that's extremely subjective. I happen to find the whitespace significantly more intelligible than nested braces and parens, but that's me. I know pl…

You don't need significant whitespace to get rid of nested braces - see every language with a pascal-like syntax.

In Pascal, the braces are simply larger: BEGIN END;

Re: Thank You, Guido

#49

Post by iandanforth »

dragonsh wrote: post #8

Language, its community and development model is a reflection of its creator and his philosophy. So Without meeting the creator Guido, through language and its community I can see is very humble and care about things besides solving computer science problems. May be this is one of the reasons of success of Python and its community which is open, humble, friendly and inclusive. In my startup we have been using Python…

I'll also add "silly." A not-too-serious attitude from day one helps protect a community (IMO). When your language is named after a surrealist comedy troupe it kinda takes the wind out of the sails of moral outrage. Whimsy is surprisingly powerful.
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