Python Shouldn't Be the Top Programming Language

I built something this week that takes a source document, extracts entities from the text, uses that to build a query, ranks the results and returns a load of relevant documents.

It's massively useful to me and my organisation, complex enough to require coding, but absolutely sufficient as a quick command line script.

I'm not a CS grad or a serious developer, I only got into coding in the last few years, but I can make all this awesome stuff without worrying about compilers, garbage collection, pointers and whatnot. Python rocks.

OpenStack and Ansible are pretty large applications/ecosystems

This article is not useful, and not-particularly well-reasoned either. Best to let it drop.

The point about speed is nonsense, python is fast when it needs to be due to the ability to optimize python with C/cpp extensions. Also the idea that “every millisecond counts” in 2022 is dubious at best, IoT is just one domain of programming and not even the most popular one.

I have never heard anyone comment about python’s syntax rules being hard to learn, in fact when I first coded in python I just jumped right in with my knowledge of Java and reworking snippets from stackoverflow. I know non-technical people who have jumped into python directly and they run more so into basic errors in logic like accidental quadratics than syntax errors in python, in fact that’s one of the strengths of python.

> knowing how to code in Python is merely one step up from knowing how to run programs in a Bash shell, which is not coding at all.

This is a silly point as well, the strength of python is beginners and even non-technical experts in other fields can program in a simple interactive environment via the REPL or jupyter and do real work. When they want to ship their software they can use the plethora of tutorials to deploy with docker or learn how to distribute wheels. 90% of my software development skills I learned from working on a project in production so I don’t really understand what your choice of programming language has to do with it.

> Nothing really big has been written in python

This is not correct, I think that python is not the best tool for writing a complex web application or web service. However there are many large complex Django apps for instance or ETL pipelines that are written in python.

I think if you were to write a fair version of this article the reasons why python shouldn’t be a top programming language are:

1) lack of a typing system like Typescript

2) no agreement on a standard way of packaging and distributing python programs

3) too many ways to accomplish the same task

4) the GIL

However, I think python should be the top programming language simply because it’s easy to learn, teach, read and write. No matter what problem you have in your python code you can usually google and find an answer or a tutorial. Like I said anyone with a little bit of coding experience can pick up python and accomplish real work in a few days and that’s powerful.

1. Python Is Not Fast

It's fast enough and "fast" is relative

2. Python's Syntax Is Too Rigid

WTF???

3. Python Provides a Limited Programming Experience

I'm cracking up at this point.

4. Nothing Really Big Has Been Written in Python

Crying laughing at my keyboard.

Django, NumPy, just to start with

" you'd think someone would have done something more interesting with it by now than write scripts and simple apps. But they haven't, and they probably won't." AAAAHAAAHAHAHA