I personally hate virtualenv. I just install pip dependencies in a vendor directory and point PYTHONPATH to it.
Python is not a great programming language
41–50 of 156 posts
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#42Something not mentioned in list that I had never considered until a conversation last year: meaningful whitespace is biased towards sighted programmers. According to a blind acquaintance, it is much easier to keep track of opening and closing parentheses and braces. Meaningful whitespace forces blind programmers to always check the number of tabs at the beginning of each line to make sure scope hasn't changed.
even if you can see, it's harder to copy paste. which could be a feature or a bug
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#43I love Rob Pikes idea that is dumb to have scope determined by invisible characters
It makes scope visual and consistent. IMO it's less dumb than having scope defined by pairs of curly braces which are impossible to read without indentation and require extra effort to keep matched - unless you try to automate the matching with a good IDE.
There are a lot of tools that shred whitespace but not curly braces.
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#44It doesn't matter about its quirks. The most important thing nowadays is that it's reached critical mass. We're at the point where even non-developers can now cobble together a bit of python code to do simple things to make their jobs easier. This means it's here forever, IMO.
I remember our salesmen back in 90's cobbling together some Visual Basic or whatever it was called. So where it is now?
Has the same happened to Python yet? No? So bookmark this thread, and come back in here when the very same happens to Python :)
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#45This list is so deliciously sophomoric. The best one is, and I quote: """To many other weirdo bits of magic syntax, like [list comprehensions]""" Obviously without actually proposing how comprehensions could be made better one has to hope the author would say he likes the equivalent Haskell better, but there is a strong doubt that is not the case.
I personally find list comprehensions in python pretty horrible. They seem to exist only to do lots of stuff in one single line of code. You end up with totally impenetrable unreadable perl-esq garbage write-once-read-never code that is too clever for its own good. And people say python is easy to learn and good for beginners...! A better approach would be something like Java Streams/.net Lync/RxX pattern IMO. Explic…
I disagree. It’s basically set-builder notation, which probably predates any programming language. It’s a concise way to express filtering.
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#46I think I agree. Here are a couple of more, from someone who has worked for years in a number of languages: - few limitations means you can easily make a serious mess, which means you are more dependent on good programmers to avoid the mess. - lack of typing information isn't "free solo" hard but it certainly makes life a lot less pleasant.
> lack of typing information isn't "free solo" hard but it certainly makes life a lot less pleasant. One of the projects I work on has switched to full type hinting along with heavy mypy¹ usage, and it has become an absolute pleasure to work with. Along with hypothesis², I can't recommend mypy enough. It must be said that retrofitting either to an existing project is a lot of work though. 1. http://www.mypy-lang.org/…
I note with interest that modern python has type hints.
Years ago the lack of visible types was often flouted as a benefit (i.e. terser code, less boiler plate, easier for learners to understand etc).
I eagerly await the addition of optional "scope hints" of { and } ! ;-)
Sarcasm aside, now that there are type hints and python programmers need to type as much as Java/golang/c# programmers, why not just write in those languages?
Genuine question - what are the benefits of starting something new in python (assuming all things being equal - i.e. equal knowledge in java/golang/c# and no legacy reasons forcing you)? Why would anyone pick writing type-hinted python Vs a fully explicitly typed compiled language?
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#47This list is so deliciously sophomoric. The best one is, and I quote: """To many other weirdo bits of magic syntax, like [list comprehensions]""" Obviously without actually proposing how comprehensions could be made better one has to hope the author would say he likes the equivalent Haskell better, but there is a strong doubt that is not the case.
I personally find list comprehensions in python pretty horrible. They seem to exist only to do lots of stuff in one single line of code. You end up with totally impenetrable unreadable perl-esq garbage write-once-read-never code that is too clever for its own good. And people say python is easy to learn and good for beginners...! A better approach would be something like Java Streams/.net Lync/RxX pattern IMO. Explic…
" impenetrable unreadable perl-esq garbage write-once-read-never code " - I had about the same impression when I first saw it. I think ternary operator is as far as I am willing to go ;)
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#48Something not mentioned in list that I had never considered until a conversation last year: meaningful whitespace is biased towards sighted programmers. According to a blind acquaintance, it is much easier to keep track of opening and closing parentheses and braces. Meaningful whitespace forces blind programmers to always check the number of tabs at the beginning of each line to make sure scope hasn't changed.
Interesting aspect. Kind of sad that our tooling is typically too simple to map something like this: Having cues for indentation changing would be easy, but it's a niche feature and thus probably won't be there.
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#49Django is ok if you have a web site with content and forms that map nicely onto SQL tables. Any 1998 website, basically, with not too much of a load. Any other setup, and it gets messy. > Needing to put dict property names `{'in': 'quotes'}. Now that's a part I like.
The inclusion of that made me question the entire thing. It's just so...wrong. Does the author not realize that you can use (almost) anything as a dict key? a = 123 b = 'foo' d = {a:456, b:123, 2.3:'2.3'} print(d) >>> {123: 456, 'foo': 123, 2.3: '2.3'}
It seems he just doesn't want to type quotes and is OK with breaking everything else to get that. Which is fine, but no one else supports that change request.
Re: Python is not a great programming language
#50> a big part of my frustration comes from having a JavaScript background Yeah, I thought so when I was reading the list of "problems". In fact, many of those are features (e.g. lists & tuples being different, list comprehensions, lazy evaluation, distinction between maps/dicts and objects, ...) but the author doesn't actually understand them. I hate to sound so negative, I guess I just didn't realize how bad a progra…
How about how condescending of a programmer not knowing JS causes you to be :-) Either way, if the number of idiosyncracies in your language is confusing to junior developers it's absolutely something worth considering.
JavaScript is full of idiosyncrasies.