Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

talkpython.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 151 posts

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#51

Post by xapata »

steinuil wrote: post #27
Rapzid wrote: post #5

I've recently had to start writing python professionally and I'm not super impressed. My previous python experience was writing small services and fixing others code. Now that I'm working on larger "apps" it feels like a 90's language with all the rough edges and warts. I'd rather being working in a language with better language services and tooling, but python has numpy and all these data viz libraries so whatcha go…

I had to work with Python a few times in the past year and I really have to agree. The lack of proper lambdas, closures, its reliance on mutable data structures and imperative idioms, and the useless distinction between statements and expressions makes it feel like somebody was trying to write a modern language but for some reason stopped halfway. For example: you can't assign the result of an "if" statement. Why? Be…

Sparse is better than dense.

Why do you need everything to be an expression? Sure, a variable lookup takes a nanosecond, but that's a small price to pay for readability.

The fact that Python has an if expression and a lambda expression, but they were intentionally, not accidentally limited to one line should indicate there are some benefits to the trade-off.

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#52

Post by [deleted] »

wuschel wrote: post #31
donquichotte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS a 90s language! ;-) My main issue with Python is distribution. Oh, you're using it on Windows? No worries, just install matplotlib using pip. Oh wait, you need to install cygwin and a C compiler and for some weird reason it won't compile but no worries there is a website with Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages but it's still not working.... Numerical computations and plotting are also my…

> Numerical computations and plotting are also my prime use cases for Python. IMO it's the only real competition to Matlab in this area. What about Julia and R? I have never worked with them, I am just wondering that they are not mentioned.

[deleted]

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#53

Post by ue_ »

willtim wrote: post #42
Rapzid wrote: post #5

I've recently had to start writing python professionally and I'm not super impressed. My previous python experience was writing small services and fixing others code. Now that I'm working on larger "apps" it feels like a 90's language with all the rough edges and warts. I'd rather being working in a language with better language services and tooling, but python has numpy and all these data viz libraries so whatcha go…

Haskell and OCaml are also 90's languages. The rise of Python at the expense of safer, typed, faster, more principled languages makes me very sad for the state of our industry. I do not even believe it is the best choice for teaching programming to children. It heavily mixes and conflates higher-level ideas like lambdas and list comprehensions with imperative programming and mutation (the assignment syntax "x=x+1" mu…

>x=x+1

I've always heard this explained along the lines of "adds 1 to whatever x is, then puts that value into x, so x is one more than it was before".

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#54

Post by breatheoften »

donquichotte wrote: post #11
Rapzid wrote: post #5

I've recently had to start writing python professionally and I'm not super impressed. My previous python experience was writing small services and fixing others code. Now that I'm working on larger "apps" it feels like a 90's language with all the rough edges and warts. I'd rather being working in a language with better language services and tooling, but python has numpy and all these data viz libraries so whatcha go…

It IS a 90s language! ;-) My main issue with Python is distribution. Oh, you're using it on Windows? No worries, just install matplotlib using pip. Oh wait, you need to install cygwin and a C compiler and for some weird reason it won't compile but no worries there is a website with Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages but it's still not working.... Numerical computations and plotting are also my…

There isn't anything good about matplotlib that I can see. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to see what's nice about it -- but as someone who has to learn it rather than already indoctrinated into matlab style plotting -- it seems like a disaster ... I switched to bokeh and am so far much happier

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#55

Post by ue_ »

yokohummer7 wrote: post #48
fnord123 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows still doesn't come with a C compiler? At least it finally comes with ssh, right?

Might be an off-topic, but recently I learned that Windows does come with a C# compiler. It's included in the .NET runtime, which is installed by default nowadays. This might be useful if you're extremely lazy to install any language implementation. It is quite amazing since even Ubuntu doesn't ship a C/C++ compiler by default.

I'm surprised Ubuntu doesn't come with gcc.

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#56

Post by mkesper »

deckiedan wrote: post #50
StreakyCobra wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: What are the reasons people are still preferring Python2 over Python3? (No troll intended)

On most OSes, open a terminal and type 'python', and you get a python2 REPL. That's reason enough to write a lot of scripty admin / automation stuff in python2. And then if you need to extend that, it's easy to just continue on in python2. It's there, it works, it's stable, you don't have to maintain versions in case of security issues, the OS package does it for you.

It's high time to change that default. I'm glad django will not support Python2 after 2020, making clear it's legacy.

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#57

Post by baldfat »

fnord123 wrote: post #25
donquichotte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS a 90s language! ;-) My main issue with Python is distribution. Oh, you're using it on Windows? No worries, just install matplotlib using pip. Oh wait, you need to install cygwin and a C compiler and for some weird reason it won't compile but no worries there is a website with Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages but it's still not working.... Numerical computations and plotting are also my…

Windows still doesn't come with a C compiler? At least it finally comes with ssh, right?

bash subsystem in Windows 10 is pretty amazing in where it presently is and where it is going.

https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows

You can compile C++ in Visual Studio and build a binary for Linux with gcc.

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#58

Post by pjmlp »

willtim wrote: post #42
Rapzid wrote: post #5

I've recently had to start writing python professionally and I'm not super impressed. My previous python experience was writing small services and fixing others code. Now that I'm working on larger "apps" it feels like a 90's language with all the rough edges and warts. I'd rather being working in a language with better language services and tooling, but python has numpy and all these data viz libraries so whatcha go…

Haskell and OCaml are also 90's languages. The rise of Python at the expense of safer, typed, faster, more principled languages makes me very sad for the state of our industry. I do not even believe it is the best choice for teaching programming to children. It heavily mixes and conflates higher-level ideas like lambdas and list comprehensions with imperative programming and mutation (the assignment syntax "x=x+1" mu…

They suffered from the VM rise of Java and CLR, finally we are circling back to AOT tooling and FP concepts are becoming mainstream so advocating them is easier nowadays.

Also these things take time, even C++, I saw recent presentations from BMW[1] and Sony[1] that only now in 2017 they are transitioning from C to C++11 (not C++14) for some specific embedded development.

[1] - https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/succes_failure_autono...

[2] - http://sched.co/9OOs

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#59

Post by moonshinefe »

steinuil wrote: post #27
Rapzid wrote: post #5

I've recently had to start writing python professionally and I'm not super impressed. My previous python experience was writing small services and fixing others code. Now that I'm working on larger "apps" it feels like a 90's language with all the rough edges and warts. I'd rather being working in a language with better language services and tooling, but python has numpy and all these data viz libraries so whatcha go…

I had to work with Python a few times in the past year and I really have to agree. The lack of proper lambdas, closures, its reliance on mutable data structures and imperative idioms, and the useless distinction between statements and expressions makes it feel like somebody was trying to write a modern language but for some reason stopped halfway. For example: you can't assign the result of an "if" statement. Why? Be…

Yeah, I don't think you know python very well at all given your criticisms. The very first thing you criticize is "its reliance on mutable data structures"--uhh no, most data structures and types in python are immutable.

I'll at least agree I've met a lot of python snobs who say don't use the built in map/filter functions and things like that in favour of comprehensions, but that's hardly representative of the language.

And please. List comprehensions can be nested, just like every other language can be abused if you really want to try.

Re: Python past, present, and future with Guido van Rossum [audio]

#60

Post by shakna »

dagw wrote: post #44
StavrosK wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you want people to switch to 3, you do need to apply some pressure by end-of-lifing 2.

Or you could offer something in 3 which will make switching enticing enough for people to do so of their own free will.

Proper unicode handling, list comprehensions, generators, await & async, TSL 1.1 & 1.2 support, better namespace handling, better string interpolation, and better argument parsing are just a few of the things that you get.

Is there a feature that could entice these people? Or have they made up their minds?

Post reply on HN