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

Python Is Eating the World

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 993 posts

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#641

Post by chrisfinazzo »

acdha wrote: post #598
memorysafety wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> curl ... | python Ah goddamnit. 868 lines, including os.rmtree calls and stuff. Also installable via pip, but... "not recommended", and: [RuntimeError] Poetry was not installed with the recommended installer. Cannot update automatically.

It’s running over HTTPS from an auditable source. Is that _really_ so much worse than a pip install, and can you explain in detail why you believe that to be true?

Somewhere, I can hear John Siracusa saying, 'curl piped into a shell? No thanks.'

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#642

Post by ghc »

xajK1 wrote: post #587
Ensorceled wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! I dislike all sorts of languages and environments. That wasn't my point. My point is if you had to write Fortran IV using an IBM 32xx terminal you wouldn't be quite so hyperbolic about modern Python. Unless you are claiming you would rather return to writing Fortran IV than use Python because you like Fortran IV better, in which case I'm very confused.

What does all this have to do with Fortran, terminals, or weaving your own core memory? Python's competitors are Lisp, OCaml, Swift, C# etc. I prefer at least Lisp and OCaml.

Python's actual competitors are Ruby, Perl, R, Shell, Visual Basic, Javascript, PHP, and Matlab.

Nobody's going to bother out OCaml or Lisp for web development, data science, or OS scripting where Python is most often used.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#643

Post by zettaquark »

I love Python but.... I would not go to the lengths that this article proposes. The dev world recreates itself every year with dozens of new high level languages and task specific support libraries. Every developer has their favorite language (Everyone is comfortable with their personal preference) That being said, I enjoy Python and it provides a quick, easy script to accomplish task in my space but I would not go as far as the article in saying that it is the end all be all for everyone. Use what you like, and understand that all languages have strength and weaknesses for task.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#644

Post by billfruit »

mruts wrote: post #549
mkl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to value my time quite highly, as I can achieve most things more quickly and easily in Python than any other language I know. Can you be more specific about how it increases your burnout? Is it the language, or someone forcing you to use that linter and settings?

Here’s my long list on why Python is terrible: 1) No pattern matching. In 2019, this is just unacceptable. Pattern matching is so fundamental to good FP style that without it, it becomes almost impossible to write good and clean code. 2) Statement vs expression distinction. There’s no need for this and it just crippled the language. Why can’t I use a conditional inside an assignment? Why can’t I nest conditions insid…

What exactly is Kerala library for, never heard of it before?

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#645

Post by dfsegoat »

hydandata wrote: post #640
Ensorceled wrote: post #436

Holy Crap! What a lot of irrational, hyperbolic hate for Python. I think everybody should spend their first couple of years working in Fortran IV on IBM TSO/ISPF. No dependency management because you had to write everything yourself. Or maybe [edit: early 90's] C or C++ development where dependency management meant getting packages off a Usenet archive, uudecoding and compiling them yourself after tweaking the config…

"It is a poor workman who blames his tools — the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the best answer he can." —Richard W. Hamming[0] I have rarely "chosen" to use Python at work, but it has never failed to get the job done. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2041981/

OT: Your cited NCBI ref to the paper "Ten Simple Rules for Doing Your Best Research, According to Hamming" is pretty neat in itself [0].

e.g. "Rule 1: Drop Modesty", "Rule 7: Believe and Doubt Your Hypothesis at the Same Time".

[0] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2041981/

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#646

Post by chrisfinazzo »

blaisio wrote: post #33

Python has a lot of problems that really slow down development, but they are all fixable. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is in dependency management. Python has a horrible dependency management system, from top-to-bottom. Why do I need to make a "virtual environment" to have separate dependencies, and then source it my shell? Why do I need to manually add version numbers to a file? Why isn't there any builtin way…

The virtualenv thing just galls me. Sure, pipenv aped rbenv - appropriately, I might add - but until they supplant virtualenv as the recommended way to have separate environments, I'll pass.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#647

Post by klibertp »

uncletaco wrote: post #637
odiroot wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I really don't understand all these buckets filth being poured on Python in this thread. It's a first language I worked with in my life that just clicked with my brain and doesn't just drain me. I would take a Python job over a Java/C/C++/Go/Rust any day. There's some languages that could pull me away from Python (Nim, Crystal) but they're nowhere popular enough to move wholesale to them.

Python is the first language that clicked with my brain as well and in college I often used it to prototype homework algorithms before translating them into the language I needed to actually submit my work in. I have nothing but love for python as a language. At the same time even when I used it heavily I never saw it as anything more than a scripting language to sit in front of some tool that was written in a langua…

> At the end of the day most of us are still writing unportable imperative code that runs like shit. Maybe blaming language is how we cope with our own failure as engineers.

Sounds just about right ;)

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#648

Post by Sean1708 »

memorysafety wrote: post #397
j88439h84 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to this is Poetry. https://poetry.eustace.io It's good. Projects should use it.

> curl ... | python Ah goddamnit. 868 lines, including os.rmtree calls and stuff. Also installable via pip, but... "not recommended", and: [RuntimeError] Poetry was not installed with the recommended installer. Cannot update automatically.

> Also installable via pip, but... "not recommended", and:

If you install it via pip you need to update it via pip, the alternative would be insane. And the reason it's not recommended is that it doesn't let you use multiple Python versions, but if you're only using one version then installing by pip works fine.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#649

Post by staticassertion »

brylie wrote: post #314
staticassertion wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Python explicitly does not agree with this... OK, I'm willing to contend that that is the case. It doesn't have much to do with my overall issue with error handling. > The same for a lot of your other complaints. It sounds like you are trying to write some other language in Python. Similarly if someone in a team using Java tried writing Python in Java they would complain a lot and end up with ugly hard to work with…

Writing programs that will never grow beyond 150LOC, or roughly what fits on a screen + one page down I've written Python for years, I think I gave it due credit for what it's good at. I'm not sure how fair this assessment is, considering the multitude of Python projects of considerable size and scope.

Why? Of course it's entirely possible to build programs of a larger size. I'm just saying that after a certain point you start hitting walls. There are tons of ways to hedge against this - leveraging mypy early on, spending more money (on eng, infra, ops, etc), architecting around the issues, diligence, etc.

It would be very silly for me to say that you can't build large systems in Python, I've worked on plenty that are much larger myself.

Saying a language is possibly the best for two important use cases (exploration, small programs) is quite a statement, in my opinion. I don't think I believe that there's a language that excels so well in, say, building web services.

Post reply on HN