Ask HN: Why did Python win? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#661

Post by nstart » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:27 AM UTC

Qem wrote: post #610

nstart wrote: post #604

If you think about it from the perspective of people learning programming, python is dead dead simple. In Unix like systems it comes preinstalled most of the time. For so many students in many parts of the world who use an HP/Lenovo laptop for university work the OS is windows and python installation is again, dead dead simple. Ruby starts off by saying you should have a version manager. And windows installation is n…

Another beginner-friendly point for Python: it has IDLE, a barebones IDE, included as part of the standard library. It's unfortunate Ruby doesn't provide such niceties to the beginners out of the box, given it inherited a lot of the Smalltalks, the language family with the best programming environments ever.

Definitely. Forgot to mention this one. I remember running scripts through the IDLE till I learnt how to run stuff in the command prompt. So darn friendly.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#662

Post by n_ary » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:28 AM UTC

r_thambapillai wrote: post #53

Python ended up 'specializing' in data contexts, thanks to Numpy / Pandas, and as a result, ended up becoming the first exposure to programming than anyone doing data stuff had. That was millions of people. In that space, it had no competitors. Ruby ended up 'specializing' in web dev, because of Rails. But when Node and React came out, Ruby on Rails had to compete with Nodejs + React / MERN as a way of building a web…

Not only math/academia, but nearly everywhere. As python started coming pre-installed on MacOS and was a lot easier than fumbling with shell scripts, a lot of scripts were being written to automate boring stuff. Also, the hidden beast is Django and Flask, which are also being commonly used by both serious and non-serious folks, overall increasing the userbase.

Also python is less verbose(compared to Java, C#, Scala, JavaScript pre-ES6 etc.) in terms of syntax, so it is much easier to learn and can do both OOP and Functional, while being easier to adapt(no compiler, easy installation, lots of popular libraries), hence academia picked it up. Also, python has built-in parallel processing features which are less daunting(in terms of concepts and syntax) than other competitors(C++/Java etc).

See the popularity of Go, same thing happened with Python.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#663

Post by demondemidi » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:40 AM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #622

I was there when it happened, I remember it well. Python displaced Perl, when Perl was a dominant scripting language, way back in the 1990s. What motivated people to replace Perl with Python is that we started using scripting languages for serious software with non-trivial complexity. In this context, Python was much more scalable and maintainable language than Perl, it was just an easier scripting language for softw…

There was a brief period of schools teaching Java compiling down to CLI programs in Unix (beans?). Perl was popular on the semiconductor world replacing tcl for gluing together complex manufacturing flows. Ruby was heading to be a replacement for Perl with bidirectional file handles and similar syntax. Shell scrips and Perl are still on use there. Python never made inroads because it brought nothing new and was less suited to file munging than Perl. Perl still has superior text manipulation semantics compared to python.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#664

Post by lelanthran » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:41 AM UTC

germandiago wrote: post #561

no_wizard wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing Rust is getting right that I hope Carbon et. al take from it is using the type system to manage memory. not having to explicitly remember `free` in safe Rust code is amazing. Knowing that if my types are sound that memory will be managed reasonably is great. I also think that immutable by default, mutable by explicit declaration is pretty great. I do think there is a lot of room to add better ergonomics…

The amount of complexity that Rust adds is not worth in most scenarios in my opinion. I can think of Rust as something for OS with critical safety or so. Besides that, in real life you end up having C in most of your software, so I am not sure how Rust behaves compared to well-written C++ with all warnings and linters on and using smart pointers. But my hypothesis is that they do not stay very far apart in safety. Th…

> The amount of complexity that Rust adds is not worth in most scenarios in my opinion. I can think of Rust as something for OS with critical safety or so.

It's difficult to have this discussion in any sane way when Rust (or C) comes up. I tried Rust, but I have projects to deliver on strict timelines and I have yet to find a client who is prepared to pay me for the (what I found to be) very large onramp time to gain deep Rust expertise.[1]

The argument of "just get gud" whenever you point out the deep learning curve of Rust is pointless; I have noticed that Rust experts only come when your employer is rich enough to pay the team to not deliver while they learn it: Basically only FAANGs and startups flush with VC money.

[1] When I have a small project I reach for C. When I need something bigger for which C is not suitable, I don't reach for C++, or Rust, I rather take the tiny performance hit and move to Go. On extremely large projects, where I work with others, C# and Java seem to hit the sweet spot.[2]

[2] Although, C# and Java are also getting a bit too complicated for my tastes too. Seems to me that every language follows C++ evolution towards complexity, because the people stewarding the language are experts in that language and/or in programming language theory.[3] They are comfortable with the changes they propose because they have no need to upskill (they are already at that skill level).

[3] I propose that a language designed by your average corporate developer who has 15 years of experience but no CS degree will have much higher adoption than languages designed by PL purists.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#665

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:42 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#666

Post by citizenpaul » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:43 AM UTC

bigger_cheese wrote: post #608

arcanemachiner wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from what I see commenting code is frowned upon by a certain subset of developers I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a... belief.

The main argument seems to be comments should left with the commit message and not "inline" i.e mixed with the code. Personally I make heavy use of inline style comments.

I've worked in tech my whole life and never heard a dev make these comments are bad claims. I only work in the boring world though. Is this a startup or FAANG or silicon valley thing?

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#667

Post by nextlevelwizard » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:43 AM UTC

qsort wrote: post #76

r_thambapillai wrote: post #53

Python ended up 'specializing' in data contexts, thanks to Numpy / Pandas, and as a result, ended up becoming the first exposure to programming than anyone doing data stuff had. That was millions of people. In that space, it had no competitors. Ruby ended up 'specializing' in web dev, because of Rails. But when Node and React came out, Ruby on Rails had to compete with Nodejs + React / MERN as a way of building a web…

Numpy is certainly amazing, but there are tons of competitors in the data/scientific space, which pure "A-type" data scientists tend to prefer: R, SSPS, Matlab... The difference is that Python doesn't entirely suck as a general-purpose language. Sure, you might have better options, but it's still reasonable to write almost anything in Python. Other scripting languages like Ruby, JS and Lua are probably a little bit b…

>Python doesn't entirely suck as a general-purpose language.

I always get caught off guard by comments like these. In my mind Python doesn't at all suck as a general purpose language. Only real argument is execution speed, but most people aren't actually writing code where Python's "slowness" matters and if you actually need that speed you can write that part in C and still use it from your Python application.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#668

Post by oezi » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:47 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #519

oezi wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sad to me that you hate Ruby. It is a better language than Python for my taste in all dimensions except number of libraries available. To begin with I could never understand why there need to be those global functions in Python to do meaningful things with lists. In Ruby the "everything is an object" really works down to every nut and bolt and is clean and very conceptually pleasing. Whether you call a package…

Was simply for readability, as in similar to English prose. What if the length of my list is greater than 10? if len(mylist) > 10: pass Only general things dealing with common needs are global, list-centric methods are on the list where they belong. I learned Java before Python and don't really miss value.toString() or value.length() much.

But it is absolutely unintuitive why it shouldn't be

    if mylist.length > 10

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#669

Post by albert_e » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:48 AM UTC

Macha wrote: post #495

AlphaSite wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not because of data science, it’s popular for the same reason Java is popular, it’s what they teach in schools. It’s a virtuous cycle, industry adoption grows school adoption which grows industry adoption…

Being taught in schools is helpful, but not sufficient on its own, or we'd see more professional Forth, Prolog and Scheme programmers

future headlines:

Scratch for Cancer Diagnosis.

NASA adopts no-code GenAI interface for critical navigation and telemetry on first human flight to Mars.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Python win?

#670

Post by lelanthran » Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 5:48 AM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #426

imiric wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Python, but most of the Zen has always been a meme, and not a guideline of design principles of either the language, or software written with it. Besides the one you mention, I also find the "Explicit is better than implicit" line to be against everything Python stands for. The language is chock full of implicit behavior, and strongly encourages writing implicit code. From the dynamically typed nature of the l…

I code both. > explicit over implicit Go was the first language I used that broke an explicit check for nil/null/None. I had to cast my nil to a different kind of nil in order for the program to run correctly. C/Python/Java/C++ didn't have this issue. Null was always null in each of these languages. Further, go panics in surprising ways sometimes. A library developer might decide to panic and cause your program to cr…

> Go was the first language I used that broke an explicit check for nil/null/None. I had to cast my nil to a different kind of nil in order for the program to run correctly. C/Python/Java/C++ didn't have this issue. Null was always null in each of these languages.

I think it makes sense - a `nonexistent` is different from a `nonexistent`.

In C, Java, C#, C++ and other languages, null/nil is a value. In Go null/nil has a type. Now that I've used Go a little, I actually miss having error messages for certain things, and comparing a `nonexistent` to a `nonexistent` is actually a logic error in my code that I want to be warned about.