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Breaking up with Python

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Re: Breaking up with Python

#71

Post by devmunchies »

brundolf wrote: post #6

I'm at a point where I think I would turn down any job offer that required me to do anything with python (even just the occasional change). I don't have the time or energy to fight with my tooling and environment that much It's really a shame that data science, ML, and notebooks are so wrapped up in it. Otherwise we could jettison the whole thing into space

Same. I was at an AI startup that used python for everything and it was so bad. Even worse since it was AI engineers writing a lot of the main app code too.

Re: Breaking up with Python

#72

Post by TylerE »

Ekaros wrote: post #57
sidlls wrote: post #49

It's rich that the author unfavorably compares python's docs to go's. Go's documentation is barely more than API auto-doc level documentation: and many if not most of the open source projects using it have followed suit. It's some of the worst documentation out there, in my opinion.

On other hand that is often the part of documentation with Python I would love to have. And for a while I have missed with many python things.

Python doc peaked for me with the 1.x “library index to keep under your pillow”

https://docs.python.org/release/1.5.2/lib/lib.html

Re: Breaking up with Python

#74

Post by heavyset_go »

Ekaros wrote: post #60
thaumaturgy wrote: post #13

I've been recommending Python to the occasional aspirational young programmer. Is it already passé? What would you recommend instead for a starter language? Looking for beginner-friendliness, widespread use, and longevity. edit: to be clear, I hope this won't devolve into a language flamewar. I'm sincerely interested in other devs' opinions, and hoping that either Python is still a good recommendation (which seems to…

It is not horrible for doing basic things or light weight things. And after they learn those and have few fights. They might be ready to research what to choose for next project.

Python is a good choice for many large projects, as well. Typing has helped a lot when it comes to managing large codebases in Python that would have been a pain to manage using something like Python 2.

Re: Breaking up with Python

#75

Post by Atlas22 »

sigmonsays wrote: post #50

There is no reason to start a new project in python IMO. Existing ones should be deprecated. the packaging ecosystem alone is enough to make anyone mad. I maintained a production system in python for a few years a while back and code refactoring was extremely painful. I hope I'll never touch python again.

What do you use instead now? Its been a long time since I used npm but it was horrific last I did.

Re: Breaking up with Python

#76

Post by cldellow »

macNchz wrote: post #27

I have gripes with some things in the current state of Python, package management particularly, but choosing JavaScript because Python's standard library is "barebones" doesn't really make any sense to me. I've always found the Python standard library to have tons of useful stuff, and when I'm doing something in JS I often feel like I'm missing my toolbelt or something. Then I install a single npm package to do somet…

Yes, it was bizarre to see:

- Python is too big

- Python's standard library is too small

- therefore, you should use JavaScript

It made me wonder if I was hallucinating, so I went and checked... my `node` execurtable is 78MB. Thanks to its robust standard library, my node_modules folder is only 884 MB.

Re: Breaking up with Python

#77

Post by [deleted] »

agolio wrote: post #18

> Python’s documentation sucks I can't agree with this. I have always had a very good experience with python documentation. One can use the built-in "help" function which works seamlessly with the docstring feature of the language. The complaint in the blog post seems to refer to the UI of the website missing a table of contents for functions. Yeah sure they could add that but I don't see it as a big point. > Python’…

[deleted]

Re: Breaking up with Python

#78

Post by Ekaros »

iamjk wrote: post #7

> Python’s standard library sucks Maybe for production ready microservices, but I've always thought Python's std lib was pretty expansive.

And I'm not entirely sure it would be good idea for general purpose language. Knowing the history servers. Which likely will anyway have some critical design or security issue at one and probably many points in their life.

Re: Breaking up with Python

#79

Post by pdimitar »

Oh yeah, "every language has issues", or "if you just invest a little effort you'll get it", sure. But those languages that I use don't prevent me from installing a CLI tool and have me fighting with its half-witted package manager to do so. And they don't (or they very rarely do) mandate me to learn idiosyncrasies so I can do basic activities.

The only thing that keeps Python alive and well is the fact that many people don't know anything else -- and never will know anything else -- and that's one of the reasons it's widely taught in universities. The AI/ML stuff can be replaced with its underlying C/C++/Rust libraries in a week so that's not an argument in Python's favor at all.

I wish people stopped pretending Python is OK. It very much is not. It's a collective delusion kept alive by network effects.

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