I switched to python last year because it has an excellent builtin library. No more having to download random crappy libraries that download even more crappy libraries.
Why Python keeps growing, explained
341–350 of 459 posts
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#342How difficult it would be to transpile python program into a more performant language using a LLM ? This would solve so many issues. Write a code in python and convert it into C++/Rust/Assembly for performance.
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#343Python 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 progr…
I’ve been a Python developer for 15 years, and Python might have been the second best language for anything when I started my career, but there are so many better options for just about any domain except maybe data science. Basically for any domain that involves running code in a production environment (as opposed to iterating in a Jupiter notebook) in which you care about reliability or performance or developer velocity, Python is going to be a pretty big liability (maybe it will be manageable if you’re just building a CRUD app atop a database). Common pain points include performance (no you can’t just multiprocess or numpy your way out of performance problems), packaging/deployment, and even setting up development environments that are reasonably representative of a production environment (this depends a lot on how you deploy to production—I’m sure lots of people have solved this for their production environment).
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
when it comes to slightly more non simple use cases involving parallelism and concurrency python and their imperative kin starts falling quite short of basic needs that are easily satisfied by fp languages like ocaml haskell racket common lisp erlang elixir or rust/golang but even if the code is single threaded and not hampered by GIL limitations python tends to be super slow imho; also debugging dynamic python and i…
A lot of these problem spaces can get away with single threaded performance because maybe they're generating a report or running an analysis once a day or at even slower frequency. I work in a field where numerical correctness and readability is important for prototyping control algorithms (I work on advanced sensors) and python satisfies for those properties for our analysis and prototyping work. When we really want…
debugging dynamic python and imperative stateful python after a certain code base size >10k LOC gets extremely painful
for any meaningful scale you are better served by basic FP hygiene as evidenced in
haskell
elixir
CL/racket
or rust/golang
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#345One thing I’d add to this conversation, though I’m certain it’s already been stated: As many have mentioned, there is a large subset of the user base that uses Python for applied purposes in unrelated fields that couldn’t care less about more granular aspects of optimization. I work as a research assistant for international finance faculty and I would say that compared to the average Hackernews reader, I’m technologi…
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Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not required to use a basic editor from the early 90s, no… but it can help on a big codebase. Why handicap yourself? I make patches once in a while with nano/micro without issue. Maybe your functions are just too long, dunno. A lot of folks can’t survive today without a giant ide awhile you advocate not to use something downright tiny in comparison. Do you hate working with jpeg or blender files because they req…
Again, just to make sure I'm being very clear, note what I said in my original comment. I wish that I enjoyed Python. I did not say, and don't assert, that Python is bad or that nobody else should enjoy it. I just wish that I did. > A lot of folks can’t survive today without a giant ide while you advocate not to use something tiny in comparison I'm not advocating anything. I'm stating my personal preferences. But I a…
Belt and suspenders, eh?
Not sure how well-known but many 3D scene formats are text, especially early ones. Similar to svg conceptually, which many are familiar with. At a certain complexity, writing it by hand is no longer practical and software support approaches necessity.
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#347How difficult it would be to transpile python program into a more performant language using a LLM ? This would solve so many issues. Write a code in python and convert it into C++/Rust/Assembly for performance.
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Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#348One thing I’d add to this conversation, though I’m certain it’s already been stated: As many have mentioned, there is a large subset of the user base that uses Python for applied purposes in unrelated fields that couldn’t care less about more granular aspects of optimization. I work as a research assistant for international finance faculty and I would say that compared to the average Hackernews reader, I’m technologi…
I hate to admit that I very often start the python repl to just do some simple calculations. I always have multiple terminals open so instead of opening a calculator I just use python in one of the terminals.
Have you tried ipython? Python repl on steriods!
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes think about what Python would be like if it were written today, with the hindsight of the last thirty years. Immutability would be the default, but mutability would be allowed, marked in some concise way so that it was easy to calculate things using imperative-style loops. Pervasive use of immutable instances would make it impossible for libraries to rely on mutating objects a la SQLAlchemy. The language…
I think free mutability and not really needing to know about types are two things that make the language easier for beginners. If someone who's not familiar with programming runs into an error like "why can't I change the value of X" that might take them multiple hours to figure out, or they may never figure it out. Even if the error message is clear, total beginners often just don't know how to read them and use the…
The type system I want would just be a type system that tells you that your code will fail, and why. Pretty much the same errors you get at runtime. Hence the need for my hypothetical type system to handle duck typing.
I don't think mutability by default is necessary for beginners. They just need obvious ways of getting things done. There are two places beginners use mutability a lot. The first is gradual transformation of a value:
line = "The best of times, the worst "
line = line.trim()
line = line[:line.find(' ')]
word_count = 0
for line in lines():
word_count += num_words(line)
word_counts = [num_words(line) for line in lines]
# or word_counts = map(num_words, line)
word_count = sum(word_counts)
word_count @= 0
for line in lines():
word_count @= word_count + num_words(line)
It's a common claim that immutability only pays off in larger programs, but I think the mental tax of mutability starts pretty immediately for beginners. We're just used to it. Consider this example:
dog_name = Name(first='Rusty', last='Licks')
dog1.name = favorite_name
dog_name.last = 'Barksalot'
dog2.name = favorite_name
print(dog1.name) # It's not Rusty Licks!
Re: Why Python keeps growing, explained
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully agree with the description. What worries me, though, is that the features that make Python quite good at prototyping make it rather bad at auditing for safety and security. And we live in a world in which production code is prototyping code, which means that Python code that should have remained a quick experiment – and more often than not, written by people who are not that good at Python or don't care about…
I sometimes think about what Python would be like if it were written today, with the hindsight of the last thirty years. Immutability would be the default, but mutability would be allowed, marked in some concise way so that it was easy to calculate things using imperative-style loops. Pervasive use of immutable instances would make it impossible for libraries to rely on mutating objects a la SQLAlchemy. The language…
Exception error handling - and their extensive use in the standard library -is the fundamental design mistake that prevented Python becoming a substantial programing language.
Coupled with the dynamic typing and mutability by default, it guarantees Python programs won't scale, relegating the language to the role of a scratchpad for rough drafts and one off scripts, a toy beginner's language.