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Why Python Is Terrible

josvisser.substack.com

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Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#31

Post by asplake »

the_af wrote: post #15
anonzzzies wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with lazy evaluation I know it has functions that are lazy, but it's not lazy as in a sense that Haskell is right? I never use it as I find it a ghastly horror show (my taste, other people like it, that's fine), but I had to use it a few times and found that (also from the article) some parts are lazy, but not python as a language. Is that not correct? > it does limit the sorts of problems the language is suited fo…

Almost surely the author of TFA meant "dynamic", not lazy. Nobody uses "lazy" in the sense of TFA.

It’s just plain wrong. The Wikipedia link points to “lazy” in the Haskell sense. Python is not that.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#32

Post by the_af »

anonzzzies wrote: post #28
the_af wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost surely the author of TFA meant "dynamic", not lazy. Nobody uses "lazy" in the sense of TFA.

The article meant Dynamic instead of Lazy? Ah.. Well, that's terrible use of words that mean something then.

Yes and yes.

It doesn't bode well for a bit of criticism when it starts by grossly misusing a technical term.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#33

Post by kzrdude »

nine_zeros wrote: post #21

I used to love python. It made me productive. Until it introduced the haphazard type system. Now I need to import types in every file, use IF to guard it in CI in every file, and use a powerful IDE to be able to use the benefits of typing.

typing brings me no happiness either, because it's a lot of work without being complete anyway. Annotations that are not checked vs actual behaviour at runtime can always, by the laws of programming, be subtly incorrect.

I still use python. The recently introduced match statement is a great addition, IMO.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#34

Post by jcranmer »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #19
guessbest wrote: post #16

The author of the post seems like an evangelist for the Go programming language. > And, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you can code Python but not Go (or another decent programming language), you probably have no business writing software for a living.

What's funny is that (in a different Python rant from another author), it was pointed out that Google was the heaviest pusher of Python in the early 2000s. It probably would have been Java (from Android and elsewhere) had it not been all the legal stuff with Oracle brewing. So, Python here, Python there, Python everywhere... then Google invented Go and Dart and other shiny new toys and began pushing them everywhere.

> It probably would have been Java (from Android and elsewhere) had it not been all the legal stuff with Oracle brewing.

Oracle started buying Sun (and consequently Java) in 2009; the merger was completed in 2010. So I fail to see how that could have influenced Google's purported aversion to Java in the early 2000s, even as late as 2007 or 2008.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#35

Post by lvncelot »

> And, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you can code Python but not Go (or another decent programming language), you probably have no business writing software for a living.

Come on man. There's being opionated, and then there's this.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#36

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Really for all the complaints about JS/NPM/Electron it looks absolutely genius next to Python tooling and PyInstall.

It's extremely frustrating that you're forced into using it to access technology that doesn't even use Python really it's just the composing glue sticking the native C++ or GPGPU code blobs together.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#37

Post by delbronski »

This {{insert_programming_tool_here}} has not worked well for me and the projects I’ve worked on so nobody should use it. And if you do use it you are not a real programmer and you should be ashamed. Because only someone who uses {{isnert_programming_tools_i_like}} can call themselves real programmers. The recipe of these articles.

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#39

Post by IOT_Apprentice »

zffr wrote: post #12

> And, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you can code Python but not Go (or another decent programming language), you probably have no business writing software for a living. I know it sounds harsh and I apologize for that, but writing software is a profession and hence you should have the knowledge, skill, and experience to use professional tools. Part of the profession of software engineering is maintaining…

Let me ask the obvious question.

Why hasn’t the go community, of professional software engineers built an even richer ecosystem of libraries?

Is it ennui, incompetence, or attitude?

As Go came from Google, is that the attitude was, “I am a professional I’ll just write my own code to solve X”, rather than considering building a library that others can use?

Are libraries harder to build in Go? Is adoption of libraries by the Go community different?

Is it a mindset, that libraries are uninteresting?

Or is it something else entirely?

Re: Why Python Is Terrible

#40

Post by retrocryptid »

Python is a horrible language, but not for the reasons the author gives. Just because range() returns a generator doesn't mean the whole language is lazy. Several Lisps allow something like duck typing and they're not horrible. It is possible to reason about program behaviour in dynamic languages, but JavaScript certainly makes it hard.

Python is a horrible language because it is not a language. It is a family of languages that changes every October. Sure, 3.x doesn't introduce as many backwards-incompatible changes per version as 2.x did, but that's like saying World War I wasn't horrible because towards the end fewer people seemed to be dying every week.

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