Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
1–10 of 357 posts
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#2We need to start ranking languages based on what people use them for.
Python is certainly #1 in ML, for example, but far from #1 in web.
I had a "which stack" argument with a client recently for a web server processing tons of data. He wanted to use Node (which I hate, but also use when performance doesn't matter because TypeScript is so good).
I showed him that the Node library ecosystem is actually pretty weak (many libraries, but most abandoned, single-contributor, and/or low-quality). Of course, browser libs for JS are amazing.
My point is just that mixing all these things together in popularity rankings is pretty meaningless.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#3Python is certainly popular, but the TIOBE Index ranking is not credible.
Quote: "The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. "
According to this index, "Logo", beats out Rust, Scala, Kotlin, and Cobol.
I cannot remind myself when I last time saw a course, book or even any source code covering Logo.
This must be some very poorly vetted, automatically collected data that tripped over something provoking the ranking.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#4I'm surprised TIOBE is still taken seriously these days. It certainly sort-of correlates with popularity but it's a bullshit measure.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#5Regression to the mean is the most powerful force in nature. Try as you might, you have to use what everyone else is using. Which is also very hard to continuously do in an industry that has ADD.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#6Python is certainly popular, but the TIOBE Index ranking is not credible. Quote: "The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. " According to this index, "Logo", beats out Rust, Scala, Kotlin, and Cobol. I cannot remind myself when I last time saw a course, book or even any source code covering Logo. This must be some very poorly vetted, automatically collected…
That C is supposed to be the most popular language makes the whole ranking questionable.
The stackoverflow ranking[1] corresponds much more to my own experience in real life.
[1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#most-popular-...
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#7The past month I have used Python again after a few years and I have to say I didn't quite like the experience as much as before. On one hand I also used vanilla Python instead of something easier to use like Django but the amount of preventable run-time errors and the lack of IDE autocomplete support at various points was kind of off-putting after coming back from very strictly typed languages like Swift, Kotlin or F#.
It also didn't have the simplicity that Phoenix / Elixir still has, for example when you Google how to solve problems you have Python 2 versus 3, the old way to handle requests which is limited and the new way to handle requests which isn't as documented, yes you have type hints and named arguments but they're not everywhere yet and so on.
So I don't think I will circle back to use Python again unless there's some kind of reason I can't easily go around it. There are still some very good ideas in there (I like the braceless approach to code hierarchy and a standard on code formatting in general) and it's definitely not as dumb as JavaScript but it has accumulated too much cruft.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#8A point I think people miss with Python is they talk a lot about 'Python Software Developers', but I think the growth is coming from areas where people are NOT developers, but are using scripting/automation in other fields. This is a much larger market than software development, and people will work very differently compared to developers.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#9Python is certainly popular, but the TIOBE Index ranking is not credible. Quote: "The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. " According to this index, "Logo", beats out Rust, Scala, Kotlin, and Cobol. I cannot remind myself when I last time saw a course, book or even any source code covering Logo. This must be some very poorly vetted, automatically collected…
It's just a complete joke.
Re: Python overtakes Java to become the second-most popular programming language
#10The past month I have used Python again after a few years and I have to say I didn't quite like the experience as much as before. On one hand I also used vanilla Python instead of something easier to use like Django but the amount of preventable run-time errors and the lack of IDE autocomplete support at various points was kind of off-putting after coming back from very strictly typed languages like Swift, Kotlin or…
dataclasses are the best recent addition to Python, IMO, maybe tied with ordered dicts.
Python definitely doesn't have conceptual simplicity, because there are many competing concepts in the language, and lack of focus on uniformity. (Example - enums are implemented with a metaclass and dataclasses with a class decorator - arguably the latter is the wrong choice, because it is already evident it limits what kind of features can be added to dataclasses).
Another example just because it makes me irate - `typing.NamedTuple` has been added as an "alternative" to `collections.namedtuple`. Same name, new capitalization, slightly different features. Add to that, a collection type that's inside the module `typing` which is supposed to be for.. type annotations, not actual implementations.