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Python Is Eating the World

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Re: Python Is Eating the World

#881

Post by btilly »

_coveredInBees wrote: post #845
btilly wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disbelieve. And I disbelieve despite being a fan of dynamic languages. The tradeoff is that dynamic languages are faster to develop, more concise, but more expensive in maintenance exactly because of issues like this. The data that I base this opinion on is an unpublished internal report from nearly a decade ago at Google quantifying costs of projects of different size in their different languages. Which was Java,…

I can believe that. But for a lot of people, the lower initial development time/cost aspect matters a lot. If I had Google resources, sure, I'd Go with other languages perhaps, but you can still write high-quality and capable software in Python. And while the batteries included aspect of Python is not everyone's cup of tea, I personally find it quite handy to have that so I don't have to waste a ton of time evaluatin…

But for a lot of people, the lower initial development time/cost aspect matters a lot.

As I said, I'm a fan of dynamic languages. :-)

One of the top ways that startups fail is failing to build what they need to build quickly enough. Maintenance costs only matter if you succeed in the first place. Using dynamic languages is therefore a good fit.

But, even if you're not Google, if you're writing software and have the luxury of paying attention to the lifetime costs of the project up front, you should choose a statically typed language.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#882

Post by flavio81 »

TylerE wrote: post #792
seisvelas wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python and Lisps do directly compete as the preferred introductory language for university computer science classes.

In this decade? Not even MIT teaches lisp anymore.

>Not even MIT teaches lisp anymore.

That's their loss.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#883

Post by flavio81 »

icxa wrote: post #604
tus88 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you ever worked in a large engineering organization full of engineers with varying degrees of experience all trying to accomplish the same goal? I can't imagine anyone has ever tried to do engineering at scale (people wise) and did not find the value in static typing. It's why startups eventually moved off RoR once they started scaling. It's why there is such a large push to type JavaScript (have you seen the ro…

>I can't imagine anyone has ever tried to do engineering at scale (people wise) and did not find the value in static typing.

>why so few large projects have been written in a LISP or LISP descendant

The major dialect of Lisp, Common Lisp, is strongly typed, and many large projects have been written in it, for CAD/CAM, controlling a NASA spaceship, complete operating systems (Open Genera), the Mirai 3D graphics suite used for creating Gollum in "the lord of the rings", etc.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#884

Post by kbp »

enginaar wrote: post #864
mpcjanssen wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing static typing. There is a well defined difference between strongly typed and statically typed.

Could you elaborate or point to a resource? AFAIK, term "strongly typed" is usually used to refer to that the type cannot change but I'm failing to find a well defined definition or the comparison against statically typed.

Static typing means that types are figured out statically by looking at the source code, and type errors are detected then when it notices a mismatch. Dynamic typing means that types are worked out at runtime by looking at live objects when code operating on them executes.

Strong typing means that types cannot be substituted for other types. In C, you can write `int x = "one"` and the char * (address of) "one" is automatically converted to an int, or in Javascript you can write 1 + "2" and a string "1" is automatically created; depending who you're talking to, either or both of these qualify as weak typing.

They're both spectrums, and commonly confused with each other.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#885

Post by willtim »

kbp wrote: post #852
willtim wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that marketing Python as "strongly typed" has the potential to confuse rather than educate. Python still crashes at runtime with these errors. It has nice error messages, but it still crashes, potentially in production. If you want to create your own "types", you'll have to add your own runtime checks. It's much more sane than JavaScript, but it's not strongly typed like Haskell. Python does not automatical…

Not automatically coercing values is all that strong typing means. Getting a type error before you run the program is static typing. They're separate axes, and both useful to talk about in a language.

> Not automatically coercing values is all that strong typing means.

It's at best a colloquial term and it's misleading to non-technical management.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#886

Post by verttii »

ernst_klim wrote: post #856
verttii wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel what you're saying is that regardless of how subpar a language is compared to alternatives as long as it has community built specific libraries that solve your problems you're more productive using them than anything else. Which is of course a fair point. A language by itself is probably not even in the top 3 considerations when choosing new tech. Stuff like runtime, ecosystem and the amount of available devel…

> A language by itself is probably not even in the top 3 considerations when choosing new tech. Stuff like runtime, ecosystem and the amount of available developers would probably be more important in most cases. Totally depends on a domain. In serious mission critical software you wont use libraries, but will use the language.

Yeah I don't disagree. But even there you would have similar other considerations besides the language. Like most still end up with C/C++ there even though there are others like Crystal, Nim, but you just don't find developers who know them easily, nor do you have any ecosystem support.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#887

Post by pvg »

feanaro wrote: post #553
pvg wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't understand how 'the design gets stuck in amber' (which you seem to agree with) and 'gives you lots of design degrees of freedom' can be true at the same time.

It gives you flexibility in writing libraries while making it harder to design a new compatible runtime. That said, PyPy has achieved pretty good C extension support while making the language faster.

The claim was 'degrees of freedom in your language's design'. It's an odd one because the history of a bunch of similar languages has been exactly the opposite. Compare, say, JS to Ruby and Python. Even with the seemingly crippling burden of browser compatibility, Javascript has evolved out of its various design and implementation ruts a lot more gracefully than either Ruby or Python.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#888

Post by grumpyprole »

kbp wrote: post #884
enginaar wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate or point to a resource? AFAIK, term "strongly typed" is usually used to refer to that the type cannot change but I'm failing to find a well defined definition or the comparison against statically typed.

Static typing means that types are figured out statically by looking at the source code, and type errors are detected then when it notices a mismatch. Dynamic typing means that types are worked out at runtime by looking at live objects when code operating on them executes. Strong typing means that types cannot be substituted for other types. In C, you can write `int x = "one"` and the char * (address of) "one" is aut…

"Dynamic typing" is really just case analysis at runtime. Every static language is capable of dynamic typing, it's not some feature that statically typed languages lack. A dynamic language is really just a static language with one type.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#889

Post by trogdc »

curryst wrote: post #877
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some details as to why it's better than other more commonly used tools (pip, venv, ...)? Looking at the home page it's not immediately obvious to me. For example, the lock file it creates seems to be the equivalent of writing `pip freeze` to the requirements file. I see a quick mention of isolation at the end, it seems to use virtual environments, does it make it more seamless? What's the advantage ove…

I'm not an expert on the internals, but virtualenv interactions feel more seamless. When you run poetry, it activates the virtualenv before it runs whatever you wanted. So `poetry add` (it's version of pip install) doesn't require you to have the virtualenv active. It will activate it, run the install, and update your dependency specifications in pyproject.toml. You can also do `poetry run` and it will activate the v…

Sounds about the same as pipenv's functionality.

Re: Python Is Eating the World

#890

Post by jakeogh »

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…

Portage solves a few of these. http://michael.orlitzky.com/articles/motherfuckers_need_pack...
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