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

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

#441

Post by pletnes » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #187

tyrust wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write a decent amount of Python, but find the walrus operator unintuitive. It's a little funky that API_KEY is available outside of the `if`, perhaps because I had first seen the walrus operator in golang, which restricts the scope to the block.

This isn't really unique to the walrus operator, it's just a general python quirk (albeit one I find incredibly annoying). `for i in range(5): ...` will leave `i` bound to 4 after the loop.

It would be utterly nuts otherwise. For loops over all elements in a sequence. If the sequence is a list of str, as an example, what would the «item after the last item» be?

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

#442

Post by MyOutfitIsVague » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

tyrust wrote: post #172

gvalkov wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nitpicking, but this is a good usecase for the := operator: if not (API_KEY := os.getenv("API_KEY")): ... For internal tools I just let os.environ["API_KEY"] raise a KeyError. It's descriptive enough.

I write a decent amount of Python, but find the walrus operator unintuitive. It's a little funky that API_KEY is available outside of the `if`, perhaps because I had first seen the walrus operator in golang, which restricts the scope to the block.

There's no block scope in Python. The smallest scope is function. Comprehension variables don't leak out, though, which causes some weird situations:

    >>> s = "abc"
    >>> [x:=y for y in s]
    ['a', 'b', 'c']
    
    >>> x
    'c'
    
    >>> y
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "", line 1, in 
    NameError: name 'y' is not defined

Comprehensions have their own local scope for their local variables, but the walrus operator reaches up to the innermost "assignable" scope.

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

#443

Post by underdeserver » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #408

acdha wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“import json” is the kind of thing which requires picking and installing libraries in batteries-not-included languages, and it’s just one of many modules which are in the standard library. That’s not a compelling basis for large projects but over the years I’ve shipped a ton of useful production code which never needed more than the stdlib and thus spent no time at all thinking about deployment or security patching.…

The official package manager is pip, it's broken, and there has been a new "permanent solution" replacement for it each year.

Poetry has been decent for years. uv is new but great and will likely continue to be.

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

#444

Post by le-mark » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

guhcampos wrote: post #175

jlarocco wrote: post #160

When did Python go out of fashion? This is the second article I've seen talking about it as if it's some kind abomination. I get that it's not the shiny new thing, but I don't understand people hating on it. Is this just junior devs who never learned it, or is there some new language out that I missed? (And please don't tell me Javascript....)

Apparently the author used to be a Java person. I have this feeling - or prejudice - that people still in the Java World are a bit out of tune with the tech industry, working on huge legacy projects on big retail or US banking. These people tend to be conservative and resistant to change, so maybe that's where these types of articles are coming from.

> I have this feeling - or prejudice - that people still in the Java World are a bit out of tune with the tech industry

Other than being ageist, it’s wrong; or misattributed to Java. I work with Python every day, and what’s missing is static typing and IDEs that make use of it to greatly reduce the amount of code and context I have to store in my head. Python (a dynamically typed language obviously) is exhausting to maintain. But easy to write. Java/C#/whatever statically typed language with great IDE is easy to write and maintain by comparison.

Of course there are IDE for Python and dynamically typed languages, but everyone I’ve tried has fallen short compared to the best Java/c# IDEs.

Static vs dynamic used to be a huge flame war on the internet, but over the past few years I’ve encountered people who’ve never heard of it. This is it.

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

#445

Post by underdeserver » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

bognition wrote: post #438

I’m on board with most of this. The one suggestion I’d add is to replace “make” with “just”

I hear about it every now and again and I can't seem to grok the benefit. What's the killer feature over make?

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

#446

Post by setr » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

pletnes wrote: post #441

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really unique to the walrus operator, it's just a general python quirk (albeit one I find incredibly annoying). `for i in range(5): ...` will leave `i` bound to 4 after the loop.

It would be utterly nuts otherwise. For loops over all elements in a sequence. If the sequence is a list of str, as an example, what would the «item after the last item» be?

the issue isn't the value of i, the issue is that i is still available after the loop ends. in most other languages, if it was instantiated by the for-each loop, it'd die with the for-each loop

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

#447

Post by ActorNightly » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

MintPaw wrote: post #363

ActorNightly wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No and no. I don't know how you even get to this level of "making it harder for yourself". Say you want to use a specific version of python that is not available on Ubuntu. 1. Install build dependencies https://devguide.python.org/getting-started/setup-building/#... 2. Download whichever Python source version you want, https://www.python.org/downloads/source/ . Extract it with tar 3. run ./configure --enable-optimiza…

> making it harder for yourself Looking at just the first link, looks way more complicated than venv. And I'm a C++ developer, imagine someone who less experienced, or even who just isn't familiar with C toolchains.

The first link is a sudo apt install command that you copy paste into terminal. in what world is that more complicated than venv?

Here it is for clarity

sudo apt-get install build-essential gdb lcov pkg-config \ libbz2-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev libgdbm-compat-dev liblzma-dev \ libncurses5-dev libreadline6-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev \ lzma lzma-dev tk-dev uuid-dev zlib1g-dev libmpdec-dev libzstd-dev

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

#448

Post by didip » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #287

> I would like to have a tool that generates the project structure for me, but I haven’t found one that fits me yet. I recommend cookiecutter for this. I have a few templates I've built with that which I use frequently: python-lib: https://github.com/simonw/python-lib click-app: https://github.com/simonw/click-app datasette-plugin: https://github.com/simonw/datasette-plugin llm-plugin: https://github.com/simonw/llm-p…

Honestly, these days, just tell AI to generate one for you.

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

#449

Post by JohnKemeny » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #80

Just a small note on the code in the linked script: API_KEY = os.environ.get("YOUTUBE_API_KEY") CHANNEL_ID = os.environ.get("YOUTUBE_CHANNEL_ID") if not API_KEY or not CHANNEL_ID: print("Missing YOUTUBE_API_KEY or YOUTUBE_CHANNEL_ID.") exit(1) Presenting the user with "Missing X OR Y" when there's no reason that OR has to be there massively frustrates the user for the near zero benefit of having one fewer if statemen…

    exit("Missing ...")

This prints the message and exits with code 1.

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

#450

Post by maleldil » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #285

blurbleblurble wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to try again I'd go with uv, it seems way way better

I have been sticking with poetry for a while, now. What would make me want/need to move to uv?

- Performance: uv is so much faster that some operations become transparent. poetry's dependency resolver is notoriously slow. uv being a native binary also means it has a faster startup time.

- Interpreter version management: uv can handle separate python versions per project automatically. No need for pyenv/asdf/mise.

- Bootstrapping: you only need the uv binary, and it can handle any python installation, so you don't need to install python to install a management program.

- Environment management: uv will transparently create and update the environment. You don't need to source the venv either, you use `uv run...` instead of python directly.

Overall, it makes common Python project management tasks simple and transparent. It also follows standards (like project definition metadata and lock files), which poetry often doesn't.