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Reasons Python Sucks

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Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#491

Post by mark-r »

baddox wrote: post #401
civility wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Pass by reference" is a specific term for a much different technique which is very rarely encountered these days. C++ isn't all that rare. I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree whether your definition of pass by reference is universal. Given your definition, can you name any language with calling semantics which are not pass-by-value? I mean, you're always passing the value of something (be it the actual value…

I don’t know any C++, so forgive me. I can’t name any language that doesn’t use pass by value. Okay, I’ve heard that FORTRAN does, but I’m not sure. But that’s the point. The distinction was made when both techniques were popular, since it was obviously an important distinction to understand.

Early FORTRAN programs could break if you passed a constant into a function and reassigned the value within that function, because the constant would change.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#492

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

ThrowawayP wrote: post #336
riskable wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked a "C all the things!" developer a while back why he hated Python's enforced indentation and in a whole lot of words he basically said that it makes it difficult to visually track scope when you have long chains of conditionals. The standard Python developer response to that is, "Aha! You like braces because they enable your bad programming practices !" However, I found the best way to illustrate that point is…

> * I asked him, "If you're never allowed to use a text editor/IDE that highlights braces or the space between them ever again would you still prefer braces to indentation?"* Being visually impaired and also having coded since before syntax-highlighting editors became standard, yes. A brace character is something that's easy to visually perceive; whitespace isn't.

Haven't indent guides been around since forever? And generally if you can't tell what indent it's wrong, it probably needs refactored anyways.

It's definitely an opinion your allowed to have, though not using the language over it would be rather draconian.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#493

Post by wilsonnb3 »

be_erik wrote: post #454
unethical_ban wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that apply to any web service that meets the following criteria? * Created in the last 5 years * Built by an organization without a large Java heritage I bet that number goes waaaay down, way quick.

For sure it may, but I wonder how many of those decisions will be regretted? Java is a fast portable language with a decent type system and a bevy of time tested libraries. It certainly isn't perfect, but modern Java is a decent development environment (and this comes from a Rubyist). I suspect only Go can match its speed, productivity, and safety.

I would bet that C# can match or exceed Java’s speed, productivity, and safety as well.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#495

Post by toyg »

trashcan wrote: post #441
toyg wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that's it, you're done You are seriously comparing Maven, a huge and over-complicated xml-based system that is not even installed by default and that people hate so much that there are umpteen alternatives (gradle etc), with `pip install -r requirements.txt` that works out of the box? I just can't even... > Python still doesn't have anything [like Maven] And I thank the Gods for that.

> with `pip install -r requirements.txt` that works out of the box? Works out of the box until you're missing a distro package that is required to build a dependency that needs to be compiled from source. I've never used maven so I don't know if it is better or worse, but I am not a fan of languages having their own package management system that has not integration with the distro one (which probably also offers som…

> Works out of the box until you're missing a distro package that is required to build a dependency

With decently-maintained packages on PyPI, i.e. shipping prebuilt wheels for the most common architectures, that's no longer a problem - unless you insist in using the distro package-manager, in which case you should pick it up with the distro people. If you stick to pip+venv, on most common architectures, these days chances are you only need a simple `install`.

> I am not a fan of languages having their own package management system that has not integration with the distro one

You must feel miserable then, considering it is pretty much all modern ones. Go, Rust, Node, Perl, Python, PHP, Java, even C# and friends...

There will always be tension between what developers want (the library released yesterday and can be forever tweaked) and what OS/sysadmins want (the library that has been tested for months and can be locked down). This is why platform-agnostic delivery systems for developers are so popular, and it is not going to change any time soon.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#496

Post by EricE »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #328
triMichael wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I can answer this one because it is one of my gripes of Python. The problem isn't that it doesn't copy, rather it is that the = assignment operator specifically doesn't copy. If you create a list "list1", set "list2 = list1", and change list1, both of the lists change. When I learned Python, this was a major source of confusion for me. Eventually I learned that in Python, instead of nothing being a pointer as…

I don't remember when in my Python career I learned about names vs. values, but it finally clicked for me that I'm predominately just binding a value to a name with the = assignment. Now everything I read has become very easy to reason about and understand. Ned Batchelder is a good resource for learning many things about python, and this talk he gave at Pycon some years ago is no exception: https://nedbatchelder.com/…

Wow, there's a name I haven't thought about in a long time. I met him several times in the context of Lotus/Iris. Super nice and obviously wicked smart guy. Always approachable and eager to help, too. I'm not surprised at his current vocation.

What a small world...

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#497

Post by ben-schaaf »

be_erik wrote: post #454
unethical_ban wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that apply to any web service that meets the following criteria? * Created in the last 5 years * Built by an organization without a large Java heritage I bet that number goes waaaay down, way quick.

For sure it may, but I wonder how many of those decisions will be regretted? Java is a fast portable language with a decent type system and a bevy of time tested libraries. It certainly isn't perfect, but modern Java is a decent development environment (and this comes from a Rubyist). I suspect only Go can match its speed, productivity, and safety.

Why choose Java when you can pick from the more modern languages that also run on the JVM: Kotlin, Scala, Clojure, etc. You get all the advantages of speed and libraries without the imo bad language design.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#498

Post by xapata »

saagarjha wrote: post #456
nicolashahn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it makes more sense in a language where you have to write callbacks all the time. I consider it a feature in Python, because by using `def` you're forced to imbue the function with meaning by providing it a name. Otherwise, it's just reading through a potentially complicated function without any context of what it's supposed to be doing.

It also makes sense if you're trying to do any sort of functional programming.

I use Python for functional programming and I don't miss multiline lambdas. I have a large monitor, so vertical space isn't at a premium for me.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#499

Post by toyg »

smt88 wrote: post #184
toyg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note how almost all languages you take as shiny examples of virtue post-date Python: they all learnt from it so much , particularly on things like the stdlib. Python’s stdlib was the gold standard for a long, long time (the “batteries included” slogan was effective for a reason - they really were!). This was not by accident - Guido and others have always had the utmost care for good developer experience out of the bo…

Your comment is a great argument for languages that make compromises to be good at some domains and not others. I’ve hated every general-purpose language I’ve ever used, and the ecosystem mess is probably why.

Oh yeah, totally. The more domain-specific you get, the more coherent (and narrowly powerful) your experience can be.

However, there are obvious costs in terms of context-switching, learning curve, career flexibility, and so on, which is why general-purpose languages are so popular.

Re: Reasons Python Sucks

#500

Post by quodlibetor »

qquark wrote: post #472
bakery2k wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't seem to be any interest in checking type annotations at run-time. Unfortunately, without doing so, type annotations look authoritative but are essentially just comments. I believe Julia is an example of a dynamically-typed language which does perform such checks at run-time - including as part of its support for multiple dispatch.

I've been using enforce for this purpose ( https://github.com/RussBaz/enforce ). It provides decorators that enable type checking where wanted. This gives the advantage of migrating existing code to type checking at your own pace at least. On a general note I've come across a few cases, when pushing python's type annotations to their limits, that force you to put the type names in string quotes, and that makes the wh…

> I've come across a few cases, when pushing python's type annotations to their limits, that force you to put the type names in string quotes

With pep-0563, python3.7, and `from __future__ import annotations` this should no longer be necessary. Those are some pretty detailed caveats, but I have been using it in places where I can and it is so nice.

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