I'm switching to Python and actually liking it • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#41

Post by latexr » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:07 AM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #3

messe wrote: post #2

> the Python interpreter is natively integrated in all Unix distros It's included in the default install of most desktop/server Linux distros (with plenty of exceptions), but I don't believe any of the BSDs ship it in their base system. IIRC macOS used to have python 2 in its default install, but I vaguely recall that being deprecated and removed at some point. My only Mac is on the other side of the country at the m…

I dont think python is pre-installed on macOS now. (uv has replaced it for me) Edit: Unlike older versions of macOS that came with Python 2.7 pre-installed, newer macOS versions (Catalina and later) no longer include Python pre-installed.

Technically macOS doesn’t come with Python pre-installed, but it does provide you with a simple path to do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44580198

The removal was in Monterey. Catalina and its successor Big Sur very much still had it. Catalina was the one that removed 32-bit support.

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#42

Post by Roark66 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:09 AM UTC

From what? It would be useful to mention towards the front of the post so we know what is the context in which you approach python.

I've switched to python primarily (from perl) in early 2010s (I think my first "seriously" used version was 2.6. This is mostly for system management, monitoring, and data transformation /visualisation. Nothing fancy like AI back then in a work setting.

I found the biggest impact was not so much on writing code but on it remaining readable for a very long time, even if it was created hastily "just get this working now" style. Especially in a team.

Python is still one of my favourites and the first tool I reach if bash is not enough for what I'm trying to do.

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#43

Post by zimpenfish » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:09 AM UTC

cedws wrote: post #29

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hasn't really been true for a while now. `uv` has radically improved the experience.

There’s still 20 years of projects using everything that became before uv. They didn’t upgrade the moment uv came into existence. Data science-land still uses other rubbish too.

> They didn’t upgrade the moment uv came into existence.

There's also projects that can't use `uv` because it doesn't like their current `requirements.txt`[0] and I have no bandwidth to try and figure out how to work around it.

[0] We have an install from `git+https` in there and it objects strongly for some reason. Internet searches have not revealed anything helpful.

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#44

Post by stefcoetzee » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:10 AM UTC

tim-kt wrote: post #6

v5v3 wrote: post #4

"the second best language for any job"

Meaning the first best language depends on the job?

Of course :)

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#45

Post by pyman » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

From what I was told, Python was originally seen as a Swiss Army knife for sysadmins. It started gaining more traction when Canonical adopted it as the main language for Ubuntu 4.10 in 2004.

Then, in 2005, Guido van Rossum was hired by Google to work on Google Cloud. That opened the door for wider adoption in academia, since Python had strong math libraries and integrated well with tools researchers were already using, like Hadoop, right around the time big data and ML were starting to take off.

Also, between 2005 and 2006, two important things happened: Ruby on Rails came out and inspired Django, which was starting to gain popularity, and web developers were getting tired of Perl's messy syntax. That's how Python quickly became a solid choice not just for server-side scripts, but for building proper web apps. In the meantime, another language that could be embedded directly into HTML was storming the web: PHP. Its syntax was similar to JavaScript, it was easy to pick up, lowered the barrier to entry for software development, worked straight out of the box, and didn't require thousands of print statements to get things done.

The 3 Ps made history. According to programmers from 20 years ago, they were like religions. Each had its own philosophy and a loyal group of followers crusading online, getting into heated debates, all trying to win over more adopters. The new generation of devs is more pragmatic. These days it's less about language wars and more about picking the right tool for the job.

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#46

Post by t43562 » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:15 AM UTC

I'm glad someone else discovered they can like python.

I got forced to learn it for a project where I was proposing Ruby and the customer insisted on Python. This was years ago when Ruby was much slower. I was annoyed but I got used to it and here I am enjoying it many years later.

I take issue with the description and use of make though! :-D What is the point of it if you're not going to use dependencies? One might as well just write a script with a case statement..... I'm adding smileys because I don't mean to be all that serious but I really do think that the failure of the youth of today to get to grips with Make is a sad reflection on our culture....... and get off my lawn, ok? :-)

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#47

Post by bborud » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:15 AM UTC

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #22

smcleod wrote: post #8

Python as a language is nice. Python's version and package management is nothing short of a nightmare.

This hasn't really been true for a while now. `uv` has radically improved the experience.

For the last 20 years that has been the mantra. Some X "solves" all the problems.

Except it doesn't. It just creates another X that is popular for a while, and doesn't somehow retroactively "fix" all the chaotic projects that are a nightmare to install and upgrade. Yes, I understand people like Python. Yes, I understand the LLM bros love it. But in a real production environment, for real applications, you still want to avoid it because it isn't particularly easy to create robust systems for industrial use. You may survive if you can contain the madness in a datacenter somewhere and have people babysit it.

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#48

Post by DataDaoDe » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:16 AM UTC

Python has done an impressive job over the years of making steady robust improvements. The typing and tooling has just gotten better and better. There are still plenty of problems though, imho async is still a much bigger pain than it should be (compared to other runtimes with a very nice experience like go or elixir, even dotnet has been less pain in my experience). Overall I like python, but it mainly boils down to the robust libraries for things I do (ML, Data munching/analysis)

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#49

Post by NoboruWataya » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

wiseowise wrote: post #13

reedf1 wrote: post #5

> Python has done a good job of hiding its legacy ugliness (such as __init__, __new__, and similar aberrations), swettening its syntax to accomodate developers with good taste. What exactly is the problem with __init__ or __new__? @dataclass is very nice syntactic sugar, but are we arguing here that having access to initializer/allocator/constructor dunder methods is "legacy ugliness"? This is the core of pythonic bu…

Bizarre is that you don’t consider it ugly. Kotlin: constructor is either part of class definition or keyword constructor. Ruby: initialize JS: constructor Python: ______new______, _______init_______ Literally this meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/three-headed-dragon

I like that magic method names generally all follow the same form so it's obvious that they are magic methods and not intended to be part of the public API. Whether that form uses double underscores or something else doesn't really matter to me as they are not being called directly.

Re: I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

#50

Post by latexr » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:22 AM UTC

> I started to code more in Python around 6 months ago. Why? Because of AI, obviously. It’s clear (to me) that big money opportunities are all over AI these days.

I find this depressing. Not only are LLMs covertly reducing our ability to think and make decisions, they’re now also making people voluntarily conform to some lower common denominator.

It’s like humanity decided to stagnate at this one point in time (and what a bad choice of point it was) and stop exploring other directions. Only what the LLM vomits is valid.