Python 3 in 2016 • Hacker News Board

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#81

Post by sametmax » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

ivoras wrote: post #19

Since it's basically all anecdotal, I'll say my gazing-into-the-crystal-ball educated-guess feeling that Python 4 will make the entirety of Python about as popular as Perl is today if: it doesn't get rid of GIL and at the same time implement a JIT compiler, and at the same time remain 100% .py source-code compatible with Python 3. The developers have dug themselves into this mess with frivolous differences ("print" a…

Python 3 is much more than changing the print() statement (which, actually, is a great thing). It's about unicode by default. It's about removing 100 of duplicates way to do things to have only one. It's about making debug much, much easier, while at the same time allowing you to write better code with less mistakes. It's about removing a lot of boilerplate. It's about introducing new syntaxes allowing things not possible in python 2.

If you see only print, you are missing the point.

But good news, there are many projects working to improve the perfs and/or bypass the GIL this year.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#82

Post by sametmax » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #23

I've done a lot of Python for many years and its all been Python 2. Python 3 seems to be a decent improvement, and if I was working on a Python 3 project, that would be fine. But when it comes to new projects, I struggle to find a compelling reason to use Python at all, when there are so many amazing languages now to choose from. With a new project you could choose Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang (or Elixir) or Go. A…

Readability. Ease of scripting. Libs. Multi-paradigm. Simplicity to debug. Good instrospection. Expressivity. Fantastic community. Great documentation (because hey, docstrings). It's a no brainer to teach and to learn or train for and gives you good habits.

And it does the job.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#83

Post by czep » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

I, for one, must admit to having almost completely ignored Python 3 until very recently. One thing I discovered that is way awesomer than you can imagine is Unicode handling: it just works! I'd say Unicode was a tricky issue in 50% of Python projects I've worked on in the past, but with Python 3, none of that matters anymore.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#84

Post by marmaduke » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:17 PM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #23

I've done a lot of Python for many years and its all been Python 2. Python 3 seems to be a decent improvement, and if I was working on a Python 3 project, that would be fine. But when it comes to new projects, I struggle to find a compelling reason to use Python at all, when there are so many amazing languages now to choose from. With a new project you could choose Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang (or Elixir) or Go. A…

"Better the devil you know". If it's a professional project, I prefer not to have to learn the undocumented potholes of new language while debugging before a deadline.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#85

Post by monkmartinez » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:17 PM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #56

Odin78 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noob question: What's so difficult about deploying/distributing python?

https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2015/09/software-you-can-use...

This should be the #1 comment/resource on this thread IMO.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#86

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:20 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#87

Post by DasIch » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:25 PM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #2

The PyPi download statistics are constantly being quoted as though the are some exact representation of the state of Python 3 takeup. I'm calling this as bullshit. How much of these downloads are computers auto updating their configurations? How, exactly, do these stats reflect the number of people developing current projects with Python 3? The number of legacy projects written in Python 2 will be vastly higher than…

Somehow Python 3 projects don't require updates? PyPI stats are going to be massively inflated due to Continous Integration and such but I don't see why that would tip the scales in one direction or the other by any significant amount.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#88

Post by tomchristie » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #23

I've done a lot of Python for many years and its all been Python 2. Python 3 seems to be a decent improvement, and if I was working on a Python 3 project, that would be fine. But when it comes to new projects, I struggle to find a compelling reason to use Python at all, when there are so many amazing languages now to choose from. With a new project you could choose Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang (or Elixir) or Go. A…

Fair question. I can only speak from my own experience here:

Productivity, productivity, productivity.

Yes, there are faster, safer, and more modern languages out there. However Python for me still hits nails the hell out of getting stuff done, really really quickly. That applies both to the language itself, and from the standpoint of having such an extensive and mature ecosystem of packages to choose from.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#89

Post by muraiki » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #80

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #23

I've done a lot of Python for many years and its all been Python 2. Python 3 seems to be a decent improvement, and if I was working on a Python 3 project, that would be fine. But when it comes to new projects, I struggle to find a compelling reason to use Python at all, when there are so many amazing languages now to choose from. With a new project you could choose Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang (or Elixir) or Go. A…

> or Go. If you like Go, try Nim - it's like Go but without all the dogma. I wrote a blog post about my little Nim project: https://klibert.pl/output/slock_in_nim.html > Why should I choose Python 3 for my new projects? You shouldn't unless it fits all the constraints of your new project. Choosing a language is not, for the most part, a technical decision: sure there are language features and implementation features…

In Nim, isn't it the case that concurrency is thread based? Something I really like about Go is that goroutines are cheap green threads, not full OS threads. This lets me spawn as many goroutines as I like without worrying about exhausting a thread pool.

Re: Python 3 in 2016

#90

Post by czep » Thu, Feb 18, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #45

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #23

I've done a lot of Python for many years and its all been Python 2. Python 3 seems to be a decent improvement, and if I was working on a Python 3 project, that would be fine. But when it comes to new projects, I struggle to find a compelling reason to use Python at all, when there are so many amazing languages now to choose from. With a new project you could choose Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang (or Elixir) or Go. A…

If you are building an application which does a lot of machine learning and statistics, I don't see a better language than Python. It has so many libraries to use for it. Note, I love R, but I can't imagine building an application with it.

You can build apps with R, but the result will be the ugliest code you have ever seen. For me, R for research and prototyping, then Python for productionalizing.