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I'm switching to Python and actually liking it

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

#481

Post by lucb1e »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #382
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #358

Maybe I'm the only one that finds Python simultaneously verbose and lacking? Either you need 500 dependencies to do something in a simple way, or you need dozens (if not hundreds) of lines to do trivial things. I avoid writing Python because there's so much bullshit to add. Much prefer Perl, I can actually get things done quickly. Python feels like programming for the sake of programming.

Could you share an example, where Perl is quicker to use and more powerful?

And not write-only (https://handwiki.org/wiki/Write-only_language)

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

#482

Post by make3 »

gvalkov wrote: post #136
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…

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.

no one uses walrus

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

#483

Post by make3 »

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…

why print then exit(1) instead of raising an exception?

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

#484

Post by [deleted] »

shakna wrote: post #429
bjourne wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neophytes take notice. Attention to details like this is what separates truly great programmers from merely good ones. That said, for scripts reusable by others you should use command line arguments . Environment variables in lieu of command line arguments is a huge code smell.

You don't generally want API keys accidentally recorded into someone's bash history.

[deleted]

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

#485

Post by all2 »

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.

I cannot tell you how many times I've hit issues debugging and it was something like this. "You should know better" -- I know, I know, but I still snag on this occasionally.

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

#486

Post by odyssey7 »

yunwal wrote: post #479

For me, python is the closest thing to writing pseudocode that functions. Every time I have the instinct to gloss over a thing when writing it down (because it feels obvious in my head), it turns out that python has an intuitive abstraction for it. Coming from a mathy background I found it incredibly satisfying, although I’ve come around to other languages since.

As a mathy person myself, I find the OOP leaning difficult to think about. Better equational reasoning, better lambdas, fewer side effects to worry about, avoiding mutation so that I can define something and still know what it is later during runtime, those are what help me think clearly. To me OOP is about the furthest paradigm from math that I’ve used.

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

#487

Post by mekoka »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #358

Maybe I'm the only one that finds Python simultaneously verbose and lacking? Either you need 500 dependencies to do something in a simple way, or you need dozens (if not hundreds) of lines to do trivial things. I avoid writing Python because there's so much bullshit to add. Much prefer Perl, I can actually get things done quickly. Python feels like programming for the sake of programming.

When you say "I actually can get things done quickly", does that include reading that same source a year from now?

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

#488

Post by deepsun »

bunderbunder wrote: post #316
zeroc8 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algorithms are a lot easier to understand when they are written in Python. I'm actually right now documenting medium size Java codebase by writing pseudocode, which looks like Python. Just by doing that, I've already discovered multiple bugs, which I didn't catch by looking at the Java code.

That might be the big thing that I think gets glossed over in a lot of these discussions. I agree that I wouldn't want to maintain 100kloc of Python. But, I don't really view that as a realistic hypothetical for a business application. Idiomatic Python tends to require a fraction as much code as idiomatic Java to accomplish the same task. The only time it even gets close is when you have code written by people who go…

Hey, you forgot useless comments for each method:

    get_field1(self) -> int:
      """
         Gets Field1.

         @rtype: int
         @return: the field1
      """
      self._field1
And use double underscores for private fields, because, you know, encapsulation.

Seriously though, in Java you don't need get*() either. Typically you either:

1. use `record` types (since Java14, 2020), or

2. use Lombok that auto-generates them [1], or

3. use Kotlin `data class`, or

4. just raw field access. I don't buy the encapsulation thing if my code is not a library for wide internet to use.

[1] https://projectlombok.org/features/GetterSetter

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

#489

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

cranium wrote: post #171
arthurcolle wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always forget this syntax exists. When was this introduced?

The Walrus operator! Introduced in Python 3.8 according to the PEP 572. Really nice to combine 1) checking if something exists and 2) act on it

And for lambdas

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

#490

Post by alexjplant »

pron wrote: post #436
alexjplant wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all switched to Python, because you have to explain less I think this could be generalized to ergonomics. Java 1.6 is an absolute nightmare for a newb compared to Python. No top-level statements, explicit typing, boxing, verbose declaration syntax, long import statements, curly braces everywhere... and, most importantly, no out-of-the-box REPL. Java has since made strides and borrowed from Kotlin and Lombok bu…

> but my understanding is that it was too little too late. Too little too late to be the #1 language of choice for serious server-side software that it is today? The weird thing about Java is that people naturally compare its popularity today to its dominance in the early '00s, which was an aberration. The ecosystem has long since returned to its fragmented self, and while Java is not nearly as dominant as it was dur…

> Too little too late to be the #1 language of choice for serious server-side software that it is today?

I was replying to

> Python's success is entirely due to entry-level programming courses. They all switched to Python,

not to mention that there are an awful lot of qualifiers in your statement. There are certainly plenty of Java jobs to be had but all the usual suspects like PYPL, TIOBE, SO (disregarding the old adage about damn lies and statistics) put Python squarely above Java in terms of popularity.

This is all to say that if I got conked on the head and lost all of my programming knowledge and had to make a living I'd restart with Python. This isn't a value judgment - the JVM and Python ecosystem are on roughly equal footing in my mind. It's just how things are.

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