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Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

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Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#311

Post by acdha »

LeonenTheDK wrote: post #75
loblollyboy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pycharm autocomplete is very good - I don’t know if that is what you mean by autocomplete support Requests is one of the modules that had more change on 2-3, but being basically the most popular language (for good reason), it’s pretty easy to find documentation for either version. I imagine a lot more than for Phoenix/elixir whatever that is. I think you’re being difficult for the sake of being difficult. I am not a…

You might be surprised to see the quality of the docs in the Elixir world: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.html

That looks … like many Python projects? It's slightly prettier than the default Sphinx theme but I'm not seeing anything which wasn't common a decade or two back.

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#312

Post by mumblemumble »

bsder wrote: post #282
smt88 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JVM is still doing well in terms of interest. The declining interest in Java is offset by Kotlin, Scala, and Clojure.

Kotlin is ranked really low. Much lower than I would expect given that it is almost an alternate Android language. Did the Dart guys somehow gain massive momentum? Or is Electron or React eating this up?

For my part, as someone who's just starting to look into cross platform development again after a couple decades of not caring, I have been 100% focused on Cordova and React Native. JavaScript on the front end seems like the only viable option, so I'm going with it despite my strong distaste for JavaScript.

I dismissed everything else pretty quickly for being too limited in what platforms I could target. Kotlin's out for being a poor choice for iOS. Dart/Flutter is out for not yet having fully baked desktop support.

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#313

Post by z3t4 »

ewmiller wrote: post #149
k_sze wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Static typing can be a bitch to get right. There are quite a few weird cases where it would be natural to write without types, but tricky once you introduce static typing and want to keep pleasing the TypeScript type checker, usually involving generics.

Dynamically typed, vanilla JS always seems like the faster option at first. Then your team grows, new developers inherit the project, and your codebase needs to be worked on at scale. This is when vanilla JS falls apart and becomes incredibly annoying to maintain, and it's why most of the big tech companies out there do not use vanilla Node JS for large projects. Types are like living documentation - a contract betwe…

Relying on the type system for code insight and bug catching means one have not carefully studied the code, which is what causes most bugs. If the code base is too large for anyone to digest, then break up responsibility.

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#314

Post by maest »

belorn wrote: post #187
iainctduncan wrote: post #104

I was a total raving Python evangelist for the first 12 years of my coding career, and then got a job as the CTO for a Python based startup that had been running absent a technical leader for 5 years, with relatively junior coders making all the decisions. I still love Python, but I now have a completely different attitude to hyper-dynamic languages (like Python, Ruby, Clojure, Elixir, etc). In my new opinion, they a…

I have found in my own work life that the problems you get from large python code is quite different from a large C code. The python code usually start out very good and readable but as it get extended and changed it tend to create a massive mess that is hard to navigate. The C code in comparison don't generally get extended or changed at all since the initial work to even add the simplest change tend to require a la…

> The C code in comparison don't generally get extended or changed at all since

That sounds like a disadvantage tbh

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#315

Post by animatedb »

photonios wrote: post #244
neverartful wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was really happy when I first learned of type annotations being added to Python. However, much of that excitement evaporated when I read that it was just a 'hint' and not something that's enforced.

It's not enforced by CPython the interpreter. You run mypy to enforce the type hints: http://mypy-lang.org/ It's quite good.

I like it a lot. Use it with --disallow-untyped-defs to make sure more is caught.

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#316

Post by the5avage »

ywei3410 wrote: post #299
the5avage wrote: post #248

This might be a stupid question but anyway... Is there someone well-versed in a statically typed language who would still prefer python most of the time? Could you explain why? For me it's just the opposite. When I program I think about the types first. When I read code I care more about types than variable names. This is in my opinion the way to go even in C. Also most python programmers I know are engineers and for…

Sure — for context I’m very comfortable with Haskell, Typescript, Java and Scala, fairly comfortable with Agda, Coq, C and Rust. I don’t prefer Python (the reasons of which I can elaborate, if you’re interested), but I do prefer to do my programming in Lisp-like dynamic languages — even when not using meta-programming. The reason for this is quite simple. A static type-system, by design is meant to invalidate program…

Thanks for the lengthy reply ;)

I'm aware of the fact that every type system will reject some valid programs. C evades this problem by letting you "escape" the type system. Many people criticize this without being aware that the language would be useless without this feature.

I don't think that an expressive type system rejects more programs though. You don't have to escape the type system that often in C++ (compared to C).

Nonetheless I probably should look up some design patterns you can do in lisp, to get a feel for what I'm missing

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#317

Post by didip »

iainctduncan wrote: post #146
didip wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This precise struggle is why Go is created, and also why Rob Pike said what he said. The industry needs a statically typed language with good ergonomics (not typing too much) and performant. I agree with you, asking everyone to be discipline with their code in a dynamic language is a bit too much to ask (unfortunately).

Yeah. When you have two experts in a garage, it rocks. When you absolutely need to hire some new folks in little old Victoria in the next two months so you turn to bootcamps and interns, not so much.... ;-)

This is just my humble opinion, but i'd argue that it is much easier to hire Go developers than Scala or Clojure, even outside Silicon Valley.

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#318

Post by didip »

hota_mazi wrote: post #216
iainctduncan wrote: post #104

I was a total raving Python evangelist for the first 12 years of my coding career, and then got a job as the CTO for a Python based startup that had been running absent a technical leader for 5 years, with relatively junior coders making all the decisions. I still love Python, but I now have a completely different attitude to hyper-dynamic languages (like Python, Ruby, Clojure, Elixir, etc). In my new opinion, they a…

> Sure, this is a problem of people, not language. I don't think so. It is a problem of language. Or more specifically, of dynamically typed languages (DTL) vs/ statically typed ones (STL). We know for a fact now that DTL's simply don't scale to large code bases. And before dozens of people tell me there are a lot of large apps written in DTL, this doesn't mean it was a good idea in the first place nor that these lar…

There are simply too many large projects done in dynamic language to show that it's probably a good idea for them.

Or they eventually come up with a hybrid micro services.

Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language

#320

Post by iainctduncan »

outworlder wrote: post #263
iainctduncan wrote: post #104

I was a total raving Python evangelist for the first 12 years of my coding career, and then got a job as the CTO for a Python based startup that had been running absent a technical leader for 5 years, with relatively junior coders making all the decisions. I still love Python, but I now have a completely different attitude to hyper-dynamic languages (like Python, Ruby, Clojure, Elixir, etc). In my new opinion, they a…

> but are really double-edged swords in large projects Yeap. I ended up dragging my team to Golang due to this. Sure they didn't write unit tests and they still aren't writing unit tests. But at least now a compiler will take a look at the code before it's run. Lots of stupid errors at runtime disappeared. For personal projects? Something like Python, Lua or Scheme is great. It can still be great in large teams, but…

ok you're prob right. that sounds bad. :-)
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