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Why Python is Important for You

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Re: Why Python is Important for You

#21

Post by elektronaut »

wging wrote: post #11

As a commenter on the article wrote: what about Ruby? I say this as a happy Python user. Ruby seems very similar but I'm reminded of a pg essay on language power: looking up the power curve, you see '$Language plus a bit of weird stuff that is probably irrelevant.' So I don't trust myself. As someone who loves Python and doesn't know any Ruby beyond a few bits of syntax and the obvious bits that are common to most la…

I think you could pretty much substitute Python and Django with Ruby and Rails, and the article would still ring true. As a Ruby developer I've only had brief encounters with Python, but to me it seems like a language I would love for the same reasons I like Ruby.

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#22

Post by pranjalv123 »

My biggest problem with Python is that projects larger than a given size tend to become unmaintainable rather quickly.

This is in large part because of the lack of strong typing and type annotations; if you aren't the only author or can't keep the codebase in your head, it takes real effort to figure out what a function does. Even the type annotations provided in a language like Java or C++ make this task much easier, not to mention languages with real strong type systems like Haskell.

That's not to say that building large systems in Python is impossible, but it takes a lot more effort and documentation that it would in other languages.

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#23

Post by agentgt »

pranjalv123 wrote: post #22

My biggest problem with Python is that projects larger than a given size tend to become unmaintainable rather quickly. This is in large part because of the lack of strong typing and type annotations; if you aren't the only author or can't keep the codebase in your head, it takes real effort to figure out what a function does. Even the type annotations provided in a language like Java or C++ make this task much easier…

I agree and I was worried I was the only who would say it :)

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#24

Post by espeed »

wging wrote: post #11

As a commenter on the article wrote: what about Ruby? I say this as a happy Python user. Ruby seems very similar but I'm reminded of a pg essay on language power: looking up the power curve, you see '$Language plus a bit of weird stuff that is probably irrelevant.' So I don't trust myself. As someone who loves Python and doesn't know any Ruby beyond a few bits of syntax and the obvious bits that are common to most la…

Library support.

For example, there really is no Ruby equivalent to SciPy, NumPy, Matplotlib or NLTK (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3179370). However, there has been some effort in the Ruby community to begin the process of developing some of these libraries (see SciRuby http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180369). but the Python libraries have been in development for years so this will be no easy feat.

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#25

Post by mekoka »

espeed wrote: post #17

Python doesn't have the glyph noise that brace-based languages do, and well-written Python is beautiful and easy to read. But lately I have been having an internal debate on whether using autodoc and inline docstrings detracts from its beauty and makes it harder to read because it reduces the amount of code you can see on the screen (see Steve Yegge's rant on this http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/02/portrait-of-n…

Docstrings should already be easy to detect by editors, so it would be trivial to add a show/hide functionality. Incidentally, one could also use Sphinx to create a plugin for that.

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#26

Post by Luyt »

rmcclellan wrote: post #15
Luyt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a great way to avoid deep nesting is to move code to functions, and bail out when some conditions are not met. As an example, this deeply nested code: def frob(someargs): if something > 2: ... # do some processing if that == "CONNECT": ... # some more processing if verdict in blessedsolutions: ... # even more processing print "Happy birthday!" I tend to write like this: def frob(someargs): if something I do th…

Neither solution is great. Excessive use of return and continue is an incredibly fast way of making code completely incomprehensible. Such complicated control flows should be treated as a major, fundamental problem. Keeping them in place will cause bugs and prevent future contributors from having confidence that their changes are correct. The problem of complicated control flow is too deep to be solved with a band-ai…

Hmmm, you have a point there, but what is your proposal to solve it in a correct way, then?

Some problems need a deeply nested control flow and arcane business rules, you have to implement that somehow, and in such a case the method I use looks like the lesser of two evils. I'd rather have some flat ecosystem of meaningful functions than one monolithic deeply nested control structure.

From time to time I like defensive programming, and when I write a function 'frob' that promises to frob something, that function first makes sure that the thing can indeed be 'frobbed', and if not, bails out. This also works well for programs that should be idempotent (although that is a whole other issue).

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#27

Post by Luyt »

user0398 wrote: post #20

Mostly true 'cept for pythons built in pasta makers: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0318/

Yeah, that's fun ;-) I wish there was a

    if main:
        ... # do some processing
instead of having to write:

    if __name__ == "__main__":
        ... # do some processing
That'd make DHH happy, too ;-)

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#28

Post by underwater »

keypusher wrote: post #13

I do love Python, but I often wish there was more rigor for some things. I currently work on a large project (>500K LOC) and have started to see it fall apart with a bigger team. Lack of enforced typing in function arguments, inability to create strict interfaces, inconsistency in standard library conventions, and package management would probably be my biggest gripes.

I've seen projects that use decorators for type checking. You could turn it into a noop for production.

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#29

Post by mekoka »

tete wrote: post #16

I am kinda afraid of getting down voted, but I have used Python and I feel like I get all this and more (CPAN) when using Perl. The major difference in my opinion is that Perl gives you even more freedoms, which causes you to need some self discipline, but you get stuff done even quicker that way. It feels a bit like Python is better for programming beginners or people that tend to be too lazy sometimes and Perl is f…

Like the author said,

you’ll spend a lot more time reading code than writing it, and [python] focuses on guiding developers to write readable code.

As someone who reads a reasonable amount of source, I'm grateful for that.

Re: Why Python is Important for You

#30

Post by tsunamifury »

andolanra wrote: post #8
ak217 wrote: post #3

I like to call this cognitive compatibility - the amount of effort required from an uninitiated English-speaking observer to understand what a program does. Most people who are deeply familiar with a language will have a tendency to discount this effort, but really it is essential because it minimizes the translation layer that your brain has to use any time you read code. Python encourages code which is readable in…

I want to make what I think is an important qualification which conflicts with a reading of your comment: Python is readable to people who are familiar with conventional Algol-based programming, i.e. every modern programmer. That does not make it readable to an arbitrary English-speaker, which is an assertion I sometimes hear: "Oh, Python is so much like English, people who aren't even programmers can read some of it…

Thankyou! So many programmers seem to forget they have an enormous base of syntax and logic which is not at all like natural language. They see python and say, oh wow this is so easy to read, just like English! But its only an easier way to express a syntax that really is nothing like what a nonprogrammer would consider English.
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