Discussed at the time:
Reasons Python Sucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706174 - Dec 2018 (535 comments)
Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
41–50 of 74 posts
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#42Some of the author's "reasons" are bogus: "My code for Python 3.5 won't work with the Python 3.7 installation unless I intentionally port it to 3.7." Sure it will, just invoke it using the Python 3.7 interpreter. I have plenty of code originally written with 3.5 that runs just fine under 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, ... "In Python, you have to work to pass variables by value." No, you don't. Python actually doesn't pass variables…
> I think this person simply doesn't understand how Python works. To be fair, if Python does something that is so different from all other languages maybe that’s a complaint in itself, even if the original complaint is invalid.
As another comment notes, isn’t this how every popular language except Go, C and C++ functions?
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#43Much of this seem to be the gripes of an inexperienced python user (e.g. experienced users tend to work with environment managers like miniconda, which turn the version hell the author complains about into a downright strength, making python environments considerably easier to manage than C environments). And the author mangles their Perl history as well. Perl 5 was (and is) by far the most popular version of the lan…
Ah yes, miniconda. Clearly that’s about managing Python versions (and dependencies)?
Why can’t we just call it python-version-manager?
But then what would we call the other 15 methods of managing python dependencies/versions?
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Lists in python are called lists because they're linked lists right? No. At the C level in the interpreter they are arrays of object pointers. > They are not called arrays because they are a different data structure. No. They're not called arrays because Python uses the name "array" for something else: https://docs.python.org/3/library/array.html
How widely are Python arrays used in practice?
I haven't had much occasion to use them. I suspect that most use cases nowadays where the speed advantage is needed involve numerical computing where the user is probably using a library like numpy or scipy and will use their array implementation, not the built-in Python one. However, arrays have been around in Python since very early on, when those other numerical libraries didn't exist, so the array built-in might have gotten more use then.
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#45Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#46Some of the author's "reasons" are bogus: "My code for Python 3.5 won't work with the Python 3.7 installation unless I intentionally port it to 3.7." Sure it will, just invoke it using the Python 3.7 interpreter. I have plenty of code originally written with 3.5 that runs just fine under 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, ... "In Python, you have to work to pass variables by value." No, you don't. Python actually doesn't pass variables…
> I think this person simply doesn't understand how Python works. To be fair, if Python does something that is so different from all other languages maybe that’s a complaint in itself, even if the original complaint is invalid.
It's very easy to use day to day, much easier to grok than C pointers for sure, despite being a bit more limited (in a good way). I remember half the CS 101 class dropping the week pointers were introduced. If it's wrong, I don't wanna be right, as they say.
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#47Some of the author's "reasons" are bogus: "My code for Python 3.5 won't work with the Python 3.7 installation unless I intentionally port it to 3.7." Sure it will, just invoke it using the Python 3.7 interpreter. I have plenty of code originally written with 3.5 that runs just fine under 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, ... "In Python, you have to work to pass variables by value." No, you don't. Python actually doesn't pass variables…
Even the title, to me, indicates that the article is going to be lousy. Rather than saying “reasons why I don’t like Python”, they present the title as if Python is objectively bad, which obviously isn’t true.
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#48As someone who writes Python 9 to 5, I much rather be writing Rust (which I do in my spare time) and would concur that Python generally sucks to write large code bases [0].
That being said, I really don't think any of the reasons here get to why python isn't fun to write large code bases in. I'd say my biggest pain point has more to do with it's typing system (which is getting better).
[0] Can it be done properly? Sure. But I personally feel worse about python the more complex a library I'm writing gets.
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#49> an associative array is sometimes called a 'hash' (Perl), but Python calls it a 'dictionary'. Python seems to go out of it's way to not use the common terms found throughout the computer and information science field.
The author isn’t well-informed. “Dictionary” is the original and traditional name for associative arrays in computer science. Smalltalk uses it as well, as do many CS books on algorithms and data structures. See for example: https://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/dictionary.html
Re: Reasons Python Sucks (2018)
#50I haven’t had skin in the game for years, so my opinion isn’t super valuable here.
Anyway, some of this is valid, albeit a lot of that is either well trodden (eg py3 gripes, pros/cons of significant whitespace) or host environment/tooling specific (eg where a thing installs `python` and which version without additional qualification and whether that’s stable).
But some of this is surprisingly mind boggling! I interrupted my reading of it somewhere in the beginning of
> Reason 7: Pass By Object Reference
The author spends quite a lot of time expressing familiarity with not just their preferred language C but demonstrating fairly intimate familiarity with several dynamic languages… several which have a reputation for exhibiting or even exacerbating exactly the same problem described. They even allude to some of that earlier. Huh?
I’d already glossed over the possibility to rename imports gripe (I think most module systems support this? Certainly the ones which augment the local namespace without any mechanism for disambiguation do, otherwise good luck ever getting anything done!)
If author is here reading, I’m not posting this to pile on, but to express honest confusion about how you’ve selected these gripes and how they line up for you with the seemingly greener pastures referenced. I don’t even much like Python either! I’m just getting a lot of cognitive dissonance trying to understand the perspective.