Python was viewed as an alternative to Perl mainly because they were used for the same kinds of scripts. The biggest difference at the time, how-many-ways-to-do-it notwithstanding, was that when a novice saw a Python script of 20-50 lines, they (felt like they) understood it without having to reach for a language reference. Readability at a glance for people who hadn't yet specifically learned the language was huge. "Executable pseudocode" was the operative phrase.
Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
21–30 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#22Science
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#23Years ago I wrote article on this topic: https://www.notonlycode.org/why-python-has-won/
In short (all below is my opinion): it was popular in academia and got some corporate adoption, so when ML exploded in popularity it was a natural choice as the scripting language for ML tooling. On top of that it’s easy to pick up as a language, and it’s a general purpose language - there are lots of scientific tools like pandas written in it, there are web frameworks, etc.
Perl was too quirky for wide adoption and it stopped developing (Raku/Perl 6 took to long to develop), PHP was focused purely on the web, similarly JS. Ruby could have won, I like it more than Python, but outside of Japan it’s also mostly been associated with web development (because of Rails), it also lacked libraries that Python already had.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#24Win what?
Against Perl? Over a decade ago. 10 years ago, the only places that required Perl were either hard engineering (i.e. non-programmer EEs) or those with legacy code bases.
Over everything else? Of course not. You don't do systems level work in Python.
The problems with Python are minor (other than packaging), and not a big enough pain to adopt another language. If you really could benefit from static typing, there are already existing languages that do the job well (C++, Rust, etc).
For the majority (including even some Perl fans), switching to Python was a significantly better experience. If you now show me a language better than Python, it's really only an incremental benefit. Sure, I prefer ML languages like F#, but the vast majority don't.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#25pytorch, langchain, streamlit, fastapi, and on and on ... There are many clear reasons imo.
If you look at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/, Python's growth really started in 2018 which was before langchain, streamlit, and fastapi.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#26In a phrase: Worse Is Better
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#27Hopefully RAM prices continue to increase so that we are forced to rediscover the lost art of software efficiency and optimisation.
It's the lost art for us. LLMs will probably rediscover it for its overlords (but no need - they have all RAM and GPUs already).
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#28No surprise that interpreted languages like Javascript, Perl, PHP and Python are disproportionately popular independent of pure language merit. The feedback loop is the killer feature.
Well if you talk to Go programmers they value their fast feedback loop too. It doesn’t just have to be interpreted languages.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#29I think the reason python won was that it was easy to learn and read and was batteries included. vs perl: People need to solve their problems, not fight with syntax Theres a lot of network effects as well. The more people were using it, the more people will use it.
I don't believe the "syntax win" scenario. Python is also ugly, due to the required indentation, like yaml. I believe more in the ecosystem, specifically how the computer vision and machine learning movements have adopted python extensively as frontend language (the heavy weightlifting is still doing in C++). The exploit of numpy has brought many many use cases into the language as well.
> Python is also ugly, due to the required indentation, like yaml.
The fact that YAML also won in its configuration file niche doesn't give you pause?
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
#30> If you survey the language landscape now, a language can be much better than Python but never get the chance Python did just because it happened to look a bit better than Perl. Which is absurd to me.
You’re struggling to understand Python’s success because in your head the primary reason Python succeeded was because it happened to be prettier than Perl, and you can’t wrap your head around why that’s enough. But it’s not enough. Python succeeded for many reasons.