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

711–720 of 993 posts

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#711

Post by cm2187 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #685
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…

Here's some rational "hate" for Python then. I just returned to Python for the first time in a little while to collaborate on a side project and ran into a few tricky-to-debug errors that caused a fair bit of lost time. Know what the errors were? In one case, I was iterating over the contents of what was supposed to be a list, but in some rare circumstances could instead be a string. Instead of throwing a type error,…

For your first error, you can do some foot-shooting with a statically typed language too.

I remember a bug I made using C#, where I wanted to delete a collection of directories recursively. I got mixed up into the various inner loops and ended up iterating over the characters like you. But C# allows implicit conversions of char to string so the compiler was OK with it, and since those where network drive directories (starting with "\\server\"), the first iteration started deleting recursively the directory "\", which in windows means the root directory of the active drive (c:\)... And SSDs are fast at deleting stuff.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#712

Post by sreque »

CydeWeys wrote: post #701
_coveredInBees wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your 2nd error isn't possible in Python, so I'm not sure what you did there. Regarding the first, sure, it is a bug that was annoying to catch. But, having an `Iterable` interface in Python is also really neat and useful if used responsibly. If you're programming regularly in Python, you are accustomed to the tradeoffs that come with a dynamic programming language and no static types, and you can still avoid issues l…

I didn't explain the second one well. Here's some exact code. group_keys = ... if not isinstance(group_keys, list): groups_keys = [ group_keys ] So rather than listifying the non-list variable, it was creating a new variable. The cause of this bug is that Python doesn't distinguish between declaring new variables and overwriting existing ones.

I still don't think you quite understand what's going on here. Python wouldn't create a new variable in this case. I It would re-assign the value represented by the variable you already assigned once. I agree that it would have been better if Python had explicit variable declarations (this is one of the few things I think Perl got right.).

On the other hand, Ruby made this same mistake. If you wrote this code in Javascript you wouldn't get an error, but you would in fact have two different variables.

For instance, this code runs for me using node 8:

  var fun = (bool) => {
    var x = 1;
    if (bool) {
        var x = 2;
        x += 1;
    } else {
       x += 1;
    }
    console.log("x=" + x);
  }

  fun(1);
  fun(0);

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#713

Post by jcranberry »

jnwatson wrote: post #115
pietroglyph wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having such a basic part of a programming language be awful is inexcusable. It's not just that it takes a lot of time; even if it took no extra time, you're still wasting extra space on your computer, risking breakage on external updates, and compromising security because you can't even tell what code you're running.

"Inexcusable". You know this started in 1989 and its major competition was Perl and TCL, right? The same issues exist in C, C++, Java and nobody seems to be complaining about those at the same volume.

50% of C++ devs don't use a package manager and 27% rely on a system package manager [1]. You don't hear C++ devs complaining about these issues not because they're happy with the state of dependency management in C++ but because there's a very low rate of adoption for package management systems. That, and the state of dependency management in C++ was so bad for so long that it's viewed as a fact of life.

1. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2019/cpp/

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#714

Post by CydeWeys »

sreque wrote: post #712
CydeWeys wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't explain the second one well. Here's some exact code. group_keys = ... if not isinstance(group_keys, list): groups_keys = [ group_keys ] So rather than listifying the non-list variable, it was creating a new variable. The cause of this bug is that Python doesn't distinguish between declaring new variables and overwriting existing ones.

I still don't think you quite understand what's going on here. Python wouldn't create a new variable in this case. I It would re-assign the value represented by the variable you already assigned once. I agree that it would have been better if Python had explicit variable declarations (this is one of the few things I think Perl got right.). On the other hand, Ruby made this same mistake. If you wrote this code in Java…

I don't understand why you're accusing me of being irrational. These seem like very rational problems to have with Python. They literally caused me bugs that cost me time to deal with that I wouldn't have faced in other languages.

You're also assuming that I don't have the same problems with Ruby or JavaScript. I do. The exact same critique could be made of them as well, but they're not the subject of this thread; Python is.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#715

Post by vaer-k »

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…

Back in my day we had to walk 20 miles to get to school -- uphill both ways!

As if the only way to gauge quality is to forever compare to the technologies of the past. Python was a great improvement on its peers in its heyday, but people, technologies and philosophies have changed since its inception and there is nothing wrong with wanting something more. That's how progress is made.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#716

Post by winstonewert »

sreque wrote: post #712
CydeWeys wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't explain the second one well. Here's some exact code. group_keys = ... if not isinstance(group_keys, list): groups_keys = [ group_keys ] So rather than listifying the non-list variable, it was creating a new variable. The cause of this bug is that Python doesn't distinguish between declaring new variables and overwriting existing ones.

I still don't think you quite understand what's going on here. Python wouldn't create a new variable in this case. I It would re-assign the value represented by the variable you already assigned once. I agree that it would have been better if Python had explicit variable declarations (this is one of the few things I think Perl got right.). On the other hand, Ruby made this same mistake. If you wrote this code in Java…

> I still don't think you quite understand what's going on here. Python wouldn't create a new variable in this case. I It would re-assign the value represented by the variable you already assigned once.

Uh. no. he typoed the reassignment, so it wouldn't re-assign the value.

> So, of three of the most popular dynamic languages, Python, Ruby, and Javascript, none of them would have helped you catch this kind of error at script-parsing time. So again, it seems like you have an irrational dislike for Python, all things considered.

Sure, but he's made it clear he likes Java. Fundamentally he's against dynamic typing, so of course he doesn't like any of the dynamic languages.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#717

Post by crusso »

jbverschoor wrote: post #104
ajmurmann wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust's cargo, JS's yarn and the grand daddy of them all Ruby's bundler address all these issues. Even newer versions of Gradle support a workflow where you specify the versions you know you want and just on everything else, including transitive dependencies, down.

Yeah.. not sure why the love for Ruby faded in startup-world

I loved Ruby, but unfortunately it didn't hold on to any kind of "killer app" role after Rails clones showed up in other language. I've switched to Elixir/Phoenix in that space and not looked back.

With the rise in ML and data science over the past years, Python finally has a killer app that no other scripting languages come close to touching. I migrated completely from Ruby when I started dabbling in ML, Pandas, etc.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#718

Post by yummypaint »

tus88 wrote: post #526
squaresmile wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty disappointing that most of the top comments don't talk about the interview with Guido himself over the history of Python. Tangentially related discussion is one of the appeals of HN but I think it's a bit out of control here.

Well in just glad this is the top comment, as Python really is taking over the world for a reason. And of all the bugs I have written in recent memory, not one came down to a lack of static typing. They were due simply to logic errors, flawed assumptions, misunderstood requirements, and good old race conditions. The static typing zealots like to think if it compiles is must be perfect, however this is a mirage. Unit…

Just wanted to mention that you can selectively statically type variables with the cython library. Of course using cython also changes other things and requires compilation, but i have found that it generally just works.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#719

Post by goto11 »

KirinDave wrote: post #616
goto11 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> folks then vehemently lecture me about the hours saved by future barely-trained developers who will ostensibly have to come and work with my code. It seems you are really complaining about having to write code which is maintainable by others than yourself?

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. A corporate point of view is than any programmer should be interchangeable with the minimum amount of fuss. I understand why someone building an injury organization has a responsibility to think about the future. But I confess that sometimes I feel very demoralized when an organization implicitly tells me that my years is study and my ongoing self-education and practice is all meanl…

But how is that the fault of Python or any particular language?

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#720

Post by CydeWeys »

mnky9800n wrote: post #706
_coveredInBees wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your 2nd error isn't possible in Python, so I'm not sure what you did there. Regarding the first, sure, it is a bug that was annoying to catch. But, having an `Iterable` interface in Python is also really neat and useful if used responsibly. If you're programming regularly in Python, you are accustomed to the tradeoffs that come with a dynamic programming language and no static types, and you can still avoid issues l…

Maybe they could write unit tests to make sure what's being passed is lists and strings. But that's probably crazy.

The values were coming from a YAML deserializer, for what it's worth.
Post reply on HN