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Python Is Eating the World

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Re: Python Is Eating the World

#241

Post by TomK32 »

Groxx wrote: post #156
geofft wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'm optimistic about tools like Poetry https://poetry.eustace.io/docs/basic-usage/ for solving this. Unfortunately Python predates the realization that good packaging tools were a thing that needs to be solved in the core language and not externally (Go, Rust, Node, etc. postdate this realization; C, Perl, Java, etc. also predate it). The flip side is that decoupling the interpreter/compiler from the build s…

> Unfortunately Python predates the realization that good packaging tools were a thing that needs to be solved in the core language and not externally (Go, Rust, Node, etc. postdate this realization; C, Perl, Java, etc. also predate it). Sure, but it's also a cultural thing. Ruby is nearly as old, and also predates this, but has nowhere near the insanity of Python. The community jumped on bundler and rvm/rbenv/etc su…

Ruby was exotic until someone translated the docs to English, but the whole ecosystem is indeed one reason I love Ruby. I really don't understand why python 2.7 is still a thing 11 years later. Sure, legacy systems, but if I install recently active open source on my machine I wouldn't expect it to use an outdated version of a programming language. Upgrading can't be that hard.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#242

Post by TomK32 »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #190
jbverschoor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah.. not sure why the love for Ruby faded in startup-world

From personal experience, hiring for Ruby development seemed to get a lot harder and of the few candidates that applied, many couldn't do FizzBuzz.

OTOH I couldn't find a Ruby job in my town. Learning Scala these days.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#243

Post by pjmlp »

lwansbrough wrote: post #82

Recently was trying to convert Python to C#... there are few things that are as absolutely incomprehensible as a Python programmer being clever with numpy. I gave up on the conversion. Perhaps this is a point for Python’s flexibility, but I’d say it’s just a waste. Here’s the code. Try to convert this to any C style language. mins = X.min(axis=0) maxs = X.max(axis=0) idxs = np.random.choice(range(self.dim), self.dim-…

Here is the C# version of that snippet, assuming the existence of such libraries.

    var mins = X.Min(axis: 0);
    var maxs = X.Max(axis: 0);
    var idxs = np.Random.Choice(Enunmeration.Range(this.dim), this.dim-this.exlevel-1, replace: false);  // Pick the indices for which the normal vector elements should be set to zero acccording to the extension level.
    this.n = np.Random.Normal(0,1, this.dim);                             // A random normal vector picked form a uniform n-sphere. Note that in order to pick uniformly from n-sphere, we need to pick a random normal for each component of this vector.
    this.n[idxs] = 0;
    this.p = np.Random.Uniform(mins,maxs);                               // Picking a random intercept point for the hyperplane splitting data.
    var w = (X-this.p).Dot(this.n)
There is nothing about Python flexibility there other than a possible missing library implementation.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#244

Post by pjmlp »

asperous wrote: post #240
hnarn wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a kind of premature optimization on my part, but this is why I chose Golang over Python as my primary language. Maybe one day Python will have its own compiler without having to drop into writing C, who knows? For know I think the features of Go are just more attractive than those of Python.

Python has a compiler without dropping into C (cython).. but it's mostly used these days for glue code between c and Python, or for small bits of code that need extra optimization. There is also Rpython and pypy

While true, their adoption suffers due to them not being the way that 90% of the community deals with Python.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#245

Post by olavgg »

yongjik wrote: post #108
aaron_m04 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write python professionally and honestly, who cares about the 80 character limit? Just ignore it! :)

I do. This is 2019, and I like being able to see at least three files side-by-side without squinting my eyes, thank you very much. Yes, I know I'm in the minority these days. :/

I have 3-4 files side by side, Everything else is max 80 chars. I really don't understand why people need more, because long lines are REALLY HARD to read.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#246

Post by KirinDave »

Ensorceled wrote: post #239
KirinDave wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure do enjoy watching people hyper-fixate on a tiny thing. I'm not sure who you think you're helping by doing this, but it isn't me.

> Every moment working with python (and that infernal pep-8 linter insisting 80 characters is a sensible standard in 2019) increases my burnout by 100x. You hyper-fixated on that tiny thing. It increases your burnout 100x, remember?

Python increases my burnout. The linter is a relatively small part of it.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#247

Post by pjmlp »

flyinglizard wrote: post #187

I feel like the world has gone insane when it comes to Python. Or have I gone insane? Python is an incredible waste of time. No types, IDEs that suck (a side effect of not having types), very partial validation with linting tools that are an afterthought to the language, indentation is a mess (good luck moving files between different editors and environments or through clipboards), slow, agonizing deployment (pyenv?…

There is hope still.

I hope that Julia eventually makes such a hit that performance gets taken more seriously as part of Python devs (yeah there is PyPy, but gets seldom used in the field).

I am like you though, my introduction to Python was version 1.6, and due to my experience with its performance, I never used it for anything beyond shell scripting on steroids.

As proven by Smalltalk, Dylan, Common Lisp and JavaScript, dynamism doesn't need to be slow.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#248

Post by randomsearch »

According to people who work with a lot of programmes teaching coding, the reason python is so appealing to new coders is the syntax. Particularly the lack of braces, the indents, the nice keywords, that make reading code much easier to a newcomer.

Having taught both python and JavaScript, I can tell you that the former is far far less confusing to newcomers than the latter. Imagine explaining the problem with equality comparison or prototypes in JS to someone who just learnt what an IF statement is.

The reason I agree that python will dominate programming for decades to come is the batteries included and pythonic approach that enables people to do cool things with just a few lines of code. As a result of the above, the ecosystem has reached critical mass. For most tasks there’s a library that does that, and it’s good, and it’s easy to use, and the developer of the library usually doesn’t expect you to understand their opinionated philosophy to use it.

I love the python convention of putting a minimal example on the homepage of a library.

You’re not going to get your average developer to appreciate the beauty of Lisp or the value of static typing. They want their ML to work, or their graphics to display, that’s all. Ends not means, almost entirely, for most people who aren’t full-time programmers.

Let’s not hate on a language that opens up programming to the world, unless we want to be gatekeepers. If you want to maintain an air of superiority, just learn Lisp or Haskell or C++ and write code that’s “deeper” into the tech labyrinth. Programming will probably specialise into “end user programming” and “Service and system programmers”. Embrace the democratisation of coding.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#249

Post by spraak »

jes5199 wrote: post #238
dehrmann wrote: post #81

There ware a time when I wondered if I should learn Ruby or Python. These days, unless I'm going to be a Rails dev, hands-down Python.

I was a Ruby programmer for a long time, but I think the world has moved on. Nowadays, I want a language with some type checking, and Ruby is extremely hostile to any kind of static analysis. Rails was pretty exciting as a replacement for how we built websites in the perl/php era, but now that React has taken over, Rails feels weirdly bloated. I would probably choose Typescript for basically everything now.

I feel that way too regarding choosing Typescript. It's a real joy to use TS and I'd be depressed having to ship plain JS to production again.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#250

Post by Daishiman »

trilila wrote: post #231
KirinDave wrote: post #93

Reading this got me thinking and I wonder if other people feel like me about this, so I'm going to share it. This is not serious, but not entirely unserious... I try to be a good sport about it, but every time I write python I want to quit software engineering. It makes me angry how little it values my time. It does little for my soured disposition that folks then vehemently lecture me about the hours saved by future…

What I find worse about Python than other languages is the lack of tooling and a relatively small collection of libs - many of which are half way done. In a last assignment, we decided Python is at most a hobby language. Python is great for machine learning because most research was conducting using this language, and as such, tooling is available. I would use it at most as an API exposing ML but that's pretty much i…

I don't know what parallel reality you live in but there are few languages with as many packages for getting productive things done than Python.

In web dev andam data science I have yet to see a language with as many libraries for useful stuff.

Now, if what you're looking for is high performance and precise memory management, sure, the language will never give you that.

What language has as many easily available libraries? Java, .net and npm come to mind as the only comparable ecosystems.

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