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Why Python keeps growing, explained

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Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#11

Post by pletnes »

Python keeps growing in number of users because it’s easy to get started, has libraries to load basically any data, and to perform any task. It’s frequently the second best language but it’s the second best language for anything.

By the time a python programmer has «graduated» to learning a second language, exponential growth has created a bunch of new python programmers, most of which don’t consider themselves programmers.

There are more non-programmers in this world, and they don’t care - or know about - concurrency, memory efficiency, L2 cache misses due to pointer chasing. These people all use python. This seems to be a perspective missing from most hackernews discussions, where people work on high performance Big corp big data web scale systems.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#12

Post by deafpolygon »

Akronymus wrote: post #9
pharmakom wrote: post #6

Comparing Python to Java 8 and saying it’s more readable isn’t showing much. And it’s not very portable the second dependencies with native code (which is common since pure Python is too inefficient for many tasks) are used. I think Python is popular for two reasons: - it’s believed to be beginner friendly compared to other languages. I’m not really sure why - maybe the whitespace? - it has an enormous set of librari…

> - it’s believed to be beginner friendly compared to other languages. I’m not really sure why - maybe the whitespace? I am leaning more towards it looking like pseudocode > - it has an enormous set of libraries available to use I believe that to be the actual reason. I've long held that python is a kinda bad language, but with FANTASTIC libraries

> but with FANTASTIC libraries written in C _and FORTRAN_

ftfy - it's the only way a tragically slow language like Python can keep up.

Edit: didn't forget FORTRAN

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#13

Post by DJBunnies »

klysm wrote: post #5
gopisuvanam wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python has been my favorite for products and scripting. I've been advocating for Python's dominance when the world was after Java. But now I'm more inclined towards JavaScript. And agree with you Deno is taking the right approach (as opposed to nodejs). Having JavaScript in the front end and backed both can reduce resource requirements as well.

By resource requirements surely you don’t mean compute resources right?

They mean human developers.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#14

Post by dagw »

pharmakom wrote: post #6

Comparing Python to Java 8 and saying it’s more readable isn’t showing much. And it’s not very portable the second dependencies with native code (which is common since pure Python is too inefficient for many tasks) are used. I think Python is popular for two reasons: - it’s believed to be beginner friendly compared to other languages. I’m not really sure why - maybe the whitespace? - it has an enormous set of librari…

A third point is that python is the default scripting and plugin language in a lot of popular commercial and professional applications. A lot of people I know who learned python did so to automate or extend applications they used for their 'real' work, like ArcGIS, FME, Rhino/Grasshopper, Revit/Dynamo etc.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#16

Post by WoodenChair »

It's a fine article and makes many of the standard points. But I would expect a slightly more data driven analysis from GitHub given the large amount of data available to them. For example, what percentage of first repositories (new GitHub users) are in Python? What percentage of GitHub Python repositories use a data science library? Etc.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#17

Post by gorgoiler »

t43562 wrote: post #3

I learned Perl first and found it incredibly useful just because of regexps but Perl programs got messy as they got larger. Python regexps are just that bit less convenient and that trivial amount matters but in python I feel that once you get to writing functions and perhaps even classes it accelerates far ahead of Perl and you can write understandable, maintainable large programs in Python. You're not forced to dip…

Well said. The core to Python’s success, for me, has always been its system for containing code inside modules and for importing and exporting symbols between those modules.

Understandable code is maintainable code. Abstraction makes comprehension possible — imagine if every call to print were an inline block of assembly instead! — and Python’s modules provide a very quick and easy way to break up large code into small modules.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#18

Post by rob74 »

qsort wrote: post #7

Eh, they're just a lot of ways to say "path dependence". Scripting languages are basically the same exact technology with respect to each other. In the alternate universe where numpy and scipy are, let's say, numruby and sciruby, wouldn't we be here asking why Ruby keeps growing? That's not a sales pitch for python, it's a sales pitch for the concept of a scripting language; it's like saying "you should really buy a…

I admit I have a blind spot for Python, because I use PHP in my day job, so when I need to do some scripting, I mostly use PHP. But admittedly Python is a lot friendlier than some alternatives (Perl, Shell scripts etc.), and more universal than others (PHP being mostly used for web dev), so that's why people choosing a scripting language for their tool/library tend to choose Python.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#19

Post by dagw »

deafpolygon wrote: post #12
Akronymus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - it’s believed to be beginner friendly compared to other languages. I’m not really sure why - maybe the whitespace? I am leaning more towards it looking like pseudocode > - it has an enormous set of libraries available to use I believe that to be the actual reason. I've long held that python is a kinda bad language, but with FANTASTIC libraries

> but with FANTASTIC libraries written in C _and FORTRAN_ ftfy - it's the only way a tragically slow language like Python can keep up. Edit: didn't forget FORTRAN

libraries written in C

That is simply not true. Even libraries like numpy, scipy and scikit-learn are majority python code.

Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained

#20

Post by ramblerman »

qsort wrote: post #7

Eh, they're just a lot of ways to say "path dependence". Scripting languages are basically the same exact technology with respect to each other. In the alternate universe where numpy and scipy are, let's say, numruby and sciruby, wouldn't we be here asking why Ruby keeps growing? That's not a sales pitch for python, it's a sales pitch for the concept of a scripting language; it's like saying "you should really buy a…

Luck of libraries and initial userbase are certainly involved in success, but not all scripting languages are equal. I mean we could add bash to that list then.

In fact I'd argue that python enjoying the success it has, despite probably the worst handling of a version bump in any language (2->3), is a testament to its popularity.

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